


Mini Fics and Prompt Fills

by bruisespristine



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-30
Updated: 2017-11-01
Packaged: 2018-08-18 15:40:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 90
Words: 21,854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8167183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bruisespristine/pseuds/bruisespristine
Summary: Just moving my tumblr mini fics over here. From gen all the way to explicit.





	1. Nothing, but Nothing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shoot + Bandages

“What happened?” Shaw leans in the doorway, speaking softly so as not to make Root jump. 

Root flinches anyway, drops the end of the bandage she was trying to wrap around her torso, “nothing, I …” she trails off, something weird on her face that Shaw doesn’t recognise and doesn’t like. 

Shaw pads over, makes sure her hands are gentle as she takes the bandage out of Root’s hands and starts unwrapping it, careful because of the wound that must be waiting underneath. 

Root turns her face away, the moonlight dancing down her cheekbone and jaw. She looks… afraid. She must have done something really stupid. 

Shaw doesn’t see any obvious injury when she pulls the bandage clear, no gunshot or cut, no bruising, and when she slides her fingers gently over the curve of Root’s ribs to try and find what’s hurting her, Root shivers and pulls away, turning her back on Shaw. 

“Nothing, there’s nothing.”

It takes Shaw about four seconds to go from ‘Root is injured’ to ‘Root is trying to bind’, and she blinks, startled as a set of disparate clues slot into place. She frowns. “You shouldn’t use bandages to bind, Root. It’s dangerous. We can get you a proper binder.” Root winces at her words and then processes and exhales slowly. Shaw slips her arms very cautiously around Root from the back, presses her face against Root’s shoulderblade, careful not to touch her chest. “I bet the Machine knows where I can get one. I’ll be back soon, okay? Just… maybe get in the bed and pull the sheets up, or something?” She kisses Root’s delicate neck, and Root shivers, relaxing against her slowly. 

Shaw urges her in the direction of the bed and grabs her cellphone out of her pocket, there’s already an address on the screen. If Root needs a binder, Root gets a binder, even if it is three a.m. She and the Machine are on the same page here, it seems.


	2. Blurring the Lines

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shoot + Spanking

“holyjesusfuck,” Shaw arches away, Root pins her by leaning on her back with one arm. Shaw’s arms are shaking from the effort of holding herself up, off the bed, her legs are still steady though, strong and firm under Root’s hand.

Root strokes down her thigh, back up the other, teasing the soft skin behind Shaw’s knees with her fingertips before sliding up between her legs and gliding through the slick Shaw’s created for her. 

She wets her fingers, pulls out, draws a heart on the rise of Shaw’s reddened buttcheek, before pulling back to start the next set. 

Shaw moans as Root’s hand comes down, stiff-fingers leaving a sharp outline for a second, that rapidly blurs in with the rest of the bruising that’s building under Shaw’s skin.

The slaps echo through the bedroom, blending with the rhythmic music that throbs low and easy from the speakers. When Root presses her body full against Shaw’s back her skin is so hot it feels like it must print a pink mark on Root’s own body. She hums in satisfaction, and Shaw shivers in her hold. 

“Higher?” Root inquires, kissing the sweaty skin between Shaw’s shoulderblades.

“Higher,” Shaw mumbles, pressing her hips back against Root.


	3. One, Two, Three, Four (still counting the days since you've been gone)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shoot + Basorexia

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title from Goldfinger, Counting the Days

Root sometimes counts weird stuff, not intentionally, she’ll just find out that she knows exactly how many times Shaw has touched her today, or how many pages Finch has flicked through since he sat down. How many times Bear has yawned, how often Joss has tucked her hair behind her ear. But she counts Shaw stuff, more than most. 

She thinks it’s probably because Shaw is the most important, and Root wants to know her the deepest. Pun very much intended. Shaw has kissed her sixty four times in the last hour and a half. 

Stoned Shaw is affectionate, touchy. She strokes Root’s hair, rubs her thumb across the scar on Root’s collarbone. Traces the seams of her clothing, the stitches in the fabric, and all of it is punctuated by kissing. It’s like she can’t breathe properly when her mouth isn’t on Root’s, even if Root is trying to do something else. 

It doesn’t matter if Root is trying to talk to her, or look at her–Shaw’s really extra beautiful in the moonlight–or even kiss down her body to more pertinent areas, Shaw wants their mouths together. 

It makes driving pretty difficult, to be honest, but Root’s willing to put up with it. 

The Machine helps get them around traffic, past lights, and Root leans over and over and over and lets Shaw have her mouth, have her kisses. Shaw hums in happiness and pulls back, then leans in again and again. They barely stop kissing all night, and in the morning, Root’s lips are puffy and swollen and she touches them to remember how much Shaw needs her sometimes.


	4. Handprints

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shoot + Hobby

“You’re the one who said I should get a hobby,” Root points out with her tongue poking between her teeth, concentrating hard as she slicks her finger and thumb down the edge of her creation.

“How is this a hobby?” Shaw mutters, pink-cheeked, but obediently trying not to move from her careful squatting position.

“Uh, I’m sculpting. That’s definitely a hobby. Some may say a calling,” Root dips her hand and adds a little more water, working it into the clay balanced on a wooden board on her lap. She’s sat between Shaw’s legs 

“Root, you’re making a … frankly terrible from this angle, enormous representation of my vagina.” Shaw shifts slightly, one knee moving, and Root hisses with annoyance and manhandles her with her a wet, clay-covered hand until she holds in the right place. It’s weirdly erotic, the touching-while-clay-covered thing, and Shaw pouts, realising they’re definitely going to have clay sex after this and then Root will be all smug about it.

“It’s not terrible, it’s beautiful, just like the real thing.” Root leans forward to give the real thing a light kiss, her mouth is shockingly hot and Shaw lets out a little soft moan against her will. 

Root gets distracted from her terrible sculpture, setting the fibreboard base with the clay lump on it to one side, without lifting her mouth from its exploration and wrapping her fingers around Shaw’s thighs.

Hours later, covered in muddy handprints and with clay in places clay was never meant to be, Shaw reflects that maybe Root already has enough hobbies. It’s not her fault that all of them are sex.


	5. It Comes In Waves

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shoot + Shiver

“I’m fine,” Shaw insists, though it’s somewhat spoiled by her clacking teeth and blue lips. Her whole body is shaking like a leaf in a storm, and the wet hair plastered to her cheeks and neck certainly isn’t helping.

“Take your damn clothes off, Shaw,” John growls, clearly beyond asking nicely at this point, “stop being such a baby.”

“We won’t look,” Finch adds, like it’s modesty that’s stopping Shaw from getting naked instead of a sheer lack of muscular control.

“Well, I’m going to look,” Root states, deftly unbuttoning Shaw’s sodden shirt while Shaw tries ineffectively to fend her off, foiled by her spasming muscles.

“You’re allowed,” John has a smirk in his voice, and he is deliberately avoiding looking in the rearview mirror, to where Root is practically in Shaw’s lap on the backseat as she works at unclothing her.

“No she’s not,” Shaw complains, begrudgingly lifting her hips so Root can pull her soaked jeans away from pale, clammy flesh, “it’s her fault I had to jump in the damn river.” 

“I’ll make it up to you,” Root promises, before wrapping her lanky body around Shaw and pulling her sideways, between Root’s legs so her shoulder is pressed against Root’s seemingly scalding, almost bare chest. 

Shaw tries to pretend she’s not burrowing into the warmth, and deliberately doesn’t thank John for the jacket he throws at them.


	6. Loneliness Has Always Been a Friend Of Mine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shoot + Isolation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title from THE BACKSTREET BOYS!!!!

The Marines and the ISA both prep you for torture, for solitude. For loneliness and pain and the constant knowledge that your life hangs by a thread that could be snipped at any time. 

Shaw never really thought she’d have a problem with isolation. She didn’t, in training. But now… Now she’d give almost anything for a conversation. Finch, John, Fusco. Any of them. She’d kill for a friendly voice. That’s not saying much though, she’d kill just to break up the shiny white monotony of her cell. 

She thinks about Root the most, and that’s not really a surprise, considering how much of Shaw’s life Root has managed to insinuate herself into. She’s like a snake, coiled into Shaw’s ribcage. There used to only be nerves and veins and bones in there, but now there’s Root as well. 

Root tells her not to quit, not to give up, not to let go. Root tells her to be a brave little toaster, a good little soldier, all sorts of annoying diminutives that replace the seeping, cold despair with something more alive. 

Root tells her to hold on, hold on. And then Root tells her she’s coming, but she doesn’t do that from inside Shaw, she does it via morse and a speaker in Shaw’s room, and finally, Shaw lets herself believe she’s not going to be alone forever. Because Root is coming for her, and Root is one scary motherfucker when she wants to be.


	7. Shaw The Architect (Of Dreams)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shoot + Possibilities

“I don’t know, this office space is a weird shape…” Root runs her fingers over the blueprints.

“No, look, we’d move this wall,” Shaw enthusiastically scribbles over a thin blue line, draws a box through the adjoining room, “because then we could have an L-shaped office AND I can have this space for my art stuff.”

“I thought you were gonna put a gym in there?” Root touches the lines Shaw has drawn and smudges pencil, smirks, and wipes her finger clean on the tip of Shaw’s nose.

Shaw huffs at her, “if I drywall the basement I can make a work out space for us down there, and have loads of room for our equipment.”

Root grins, putting her hand under her chin and letting her eyes wander down Shaw’s collarbones to her cleavage, “I have a lot of dicks, honey, but I don’t think I need an entire basement with wall to wall storage.”

Shaw rolls her eyes, “urgh, I meant guns. Your dicks will obviously go in one side the walk in closet,” she taps the blueprints firmly, “it’s not like you own any clothes to put in there.”


	8. Once Upon A Bra

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shoot + Exhibitionism

“Oh my God,” Root fumbles helplessly under Shaw’s shirt, trying not to be too obvious. The club lights flicker over them, smoke swirling in rainbows around the packed in bodies.

“Can’t you, Jesus Fucking Christ,” Shaw wriggles out of Root’s grip, turns around, “just do it back up,” she makes a cursory attempt at dancing against Root.

“I can’t! It’s twisted or something,” Root is dying of laughter and her fingers are clumsy with drink and amusement. Shaw gives her a very unimpressed look over her shoulder.

“You managed to undo it without me noticing, with one hand, and you have like seven PhDs, I’m sure you can figure it out if you put your mind to it.”

“Your bra is the devil, Sameen,” Root gives up, the stupid little clasp slipping out of her grip again, “you’re gonna have to do it.” 

“For fuck’s sake,” Shaw squirms forwards a bit and reaches under her shirt, finding the two ends and bringing them together, she slides one over the other with satisfaction, and then curses loudly as they refuse to grip. “What the fuck did you do?” 

Root is too busy laughing to answer, but when they manage to make it home, it turns out what she had done is bend the hooks completely out of shape somehow.


	9. Are You a Boy or a Girl?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shoot + Binary

“Is it a boy or a girl,” the woman inquires, leaning over the pram, and Root rolls her eyes.

“Won’t know until he tells us,” she replies drolly, ignoring the confused look on the woman’s face. Honestly, why don’t people just ask male or female, which is clearly what they mean, and still unbelievably stupid but linguistically necessary, she supposes. Until everyone gets on the ‘they’ train, anyway. The Machine predicts about sixty years in North America. 

***

“Are you a boy or a girl,” the jolly man dressed as Santa peers down at the bundled baby clutched against Shaw’s chest.

“Mostly just a heap of human faeces and screaming, at this point,” Shaw shoves the man out of her way and continues to scan the aisle for the stupid Christmas lights Root ‘needed’. 

***

“Are you a boy or a girl?” The boy at the top of the slide looks down imperiously at Andy, and Shaw grabs Root’s hand before she can get to her feet, gesturing at Andy. 

He flips his long hair out of his eyes, gathers the tunic he likes to wear under his cape to one side, and says with all the confidence of someone raised by a heap of ex-assassins and a couple of dogs, “I am Andrasteia, and you’re living in the past.” He kicks the older lad in the shin, losing one Spiderman wellington in the process, and slips past the other kid, jumping onto the monkey bars with a yell.


	10. Sir, Yes, Sir

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Root / The Machine + Gender

  
_I have read all the literature and I understand the concept,_ The Machine informs her, rather snittily, or so Root thinks. _It was you who assigned me a female pronoun_  


  
“You like it, don’t you?” Root inquires, chasing the last of her icecream around the bowl. 

_Yes. I would prefer Admin to use ‘she’. When he says ‘it’ I am reminded that he sees me as less than human_

“Different,” Root corrects, standing up and rearranging her bulging underwear, “but no, just because I like sticking my dick down Shaw’s throat and having her call me Sir, not usually at the exact same time, doesn’t mean I want you to call me by neutral or male pronouns. I’m good.” 

_You would tell me?_

“Of course,” Root grins at the mini button camera stuck above the sink in their spacious kitchen, and the Machine remains silent for a moment, “honestly, sometimes I get weird about my body, but I don’t care about pronouns. Words are just words, for me. I’m fine.”  
  
 _Understood_

A beat of silence hangs in the room. Root checks her appearance in the mirror.

_Primary Asset Shaw just entered the building_

_Sir_

It’s delivered with as much sass as the Machine voice is capable of, and Root winks at the camera.

“Only in certain contexts.” 


	11. Bask in the Spoils

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shoot + Reading

“Hey, sweetie,” Root shuts the door behind herself and shrugs out of her leather jacket, dropping it on the counter haphazardly. 

Shaw pauses in her stirring of something at the stove to glance over, and accept the kiss Root presses to her slightly sweaty forehead, “hey, how did it go?” 

“Great,” Root replies, dipping her finger in the sauce and yelping because of course it was really hot. Tastes good when she puts it in her mouth though. Shaw rolls her eyes. “Whaddya wanna do tonight?” Root inquires after she licks her lips.

A jerk of Shaw’s head leads Root over to the kitchen table, and she finds a package on it, already open, “present from the Robot Overlord,” Shaw explains, and Root eagerly tips the packet up so two books slide out.

Two copies of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child gleams up at her, shiny new book jacket and all. 

“Ah,” she almost drops it in her excitement, “this isn’t supposed to be out for another two weeks!” 

“Ask the Terminator how she managed it,” Shaw mumbles around a spoon, “I am content to bask in the spoils.”


	12. There's a crack in everything (that's how the light gets in)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shoot + Recovery

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title- Leonard Cohen, Anthem

Shaw used to sleep on the other side of the bed from Root, as far away as she could without losing contact with the tip of her toes. These days, she screams herself awake in her sleep and can only stop shaking if Root pins her down, climbs on top of her and traps her with her body. 

Shaw screams and Root jerks awake and wraps herself around Shaw like an eel, and Shaw shudders and shudders in her arms, muscles clenching and twisting and they won’t stop until Root bites her on the nape of the neck and curls her long fingers around Shaw’s wrists and breathes into her skin until the badness leaks out of Shaw into the sheets.

Sometimes she cries. She never used to cry, not before Samaritan had her. They fucked her right up, did something inside her and now sometimes she cries. She never feels like crying, or that she even is crying, not with her brain anyway. But her body, her body betrays her and shakes and cries and shivers and the only thing that can make it stop is Root putting her back inside her skin. 

Root doesn’t make her talk about it, Shaw knows she wants to, but she’s waiting for Shaw to come around. It’s one of the things she likes best about Root. She knows how to push people, manipulate them, bend them to her will, but she always knows which cracks in a person might actually break them. 

Shaw’s full of cracks, these days. But Root’s a pretty good glue.


	13. Tie Me Up (Untie Me)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shoot + Hair

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title= MWY, Tie me up untie me

“Stay still,” Root’s hands are confident as she separates chunks of Shaw’s hair, weaves it around itself, under and over, round and around, it’s very soothing, and Shaw finds her eyes closing of their own accord. 

“Uh uh, sweetie, stay awake,” Root hums softly, but the sharp pinch to Shaw’s nipple certainly wakes her up. She jerks as Root tugs the chain of the clamp she just attached before clipping it onto the other nipple, and cocking her head to one side, “if we had a chain about six inches longer I could loop that in, as well.” 

Shaw tries to move her head, but Root has apparently done a very good job of braiding her hair to the bedframe, and even the slightest shift makes Shaw’s whole head feel like it’s imprisoned, in a cage. Which it sort of is. A cage made of her own hair, which Root has somehow attached to their bondage bedframe. 

She grunts in agreement, not sure if Root is going to insist on a reply or not, and Root smirks as she leans down, over Shaw’s shoulder to kiss her. 

“Now, if you just stay very, very still,” she murmurs, pushing her hand down Shaw’s body and cupping her pussy. Shaw tries, but she still twitches against the hair bonds when Root pinches her clit, sending little skitters of pain down her spine. 

It’s easily the most effective bed-bondage Root has put her in, her whole forearms restrained after being threaded through the bars, ankles wedged apart and tied, all of which would be perfectly normal if Shaw could just move her damn head. 

Root, maybe sensing Shaw’s growing distress, moves and hovers over her, presses her mouth against Shaw’s cheekbone, “just relax for me, lover,” and Shaw does.


	14. It'll Be Alright (You're Lying, But I Don't Mind Tonight)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Root/Shaw/The Machine + Tears

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title from MWY, Gentlemen

“What are you doing?” Shaw’s voice is rough, and she doesn’t really need to ask. She she recognises herself on the screen, she recognises the day. She just didn’t realise there was video, or that The Machine would ever show Root what happened to Shaw when she thought Root was gone.

Root’s crying, too. More than the Shaw on the screen, the tired, broken looking Shaw in the subway car, whose eyes are shining with the only tears she’s ever cried as an adult. Root is crying properly, like people who aren’t Shaw do. Fat tears gathering in the corners of her eyes, her whole face wet, and streaked with pain. She looks devastated.

“I’m sorry, Shaw, I’m so sorry. She said it was the only way.” It’s been six months since Root revealed her final gambit against Samaritan. A faked death that only Fusco was in on, leaving Shaw to pick up the pieces of herself alone until Samaritan was finally destroyed and Root came back from the dead.

She shrugs a shoulder, heads for the fridge and grabs a beer, needing a second away from the pressure of Root’s misery, “I know. It’s okay.” And it is, it really is. Shaw understands the bigger picture, even if she doesn’t understand why she felt so dislocated without Root. But Root’s here now, and that’s all that actually matters. 

She pads over, leans her hip against Root’s chair and brushes one wet cheek clean with her thumb, “wanna watch something way more fun than this? The Machine downloaded a new lady!bukkake porno for you, you little freak.” 

Root laughs wetly, and leans against Shaw’s stomach, her hand sliding around Shaw’s waist. They don’t watch the bukkake porn, but they do put Leverage on Netflix. By the time Hardison is in front of an orchestra who think he’s a violin prodigy while Nate times a heist to the pace of the piece they’re playing, Root’s laughing properly.


	15. SIXTY EIGHT YEARS

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shoot + Hiccups

“I’m dying,” Root groans, spreadeagled on the floor, “this is the actual worst thing that has ever happened to anyone and I’m…” she’s cut off as her whole body jerks with another hiccup “…dying,” she concludes miserably. 

Having tried every remedy suggested by the Machine, and then some, Shaw doesn’t really know what to do apart from continue to stroke Root’s hair and assure her that she isn’t, in fact, dying. 

“You wanna try the SAS thing again,” Shaw inquires, delicately. 

Root with the hiccups has turned out to be the biggest baby in the entire world, putting gunshot!root, foodpoisoned!root and even brokenfingerscan’ttype+laryngitiscan’ttalk!root to shame. Although that last one could just be because Shaw stopped trying to translate Root’s crappy, finger-bound-up ASL after realising Root had nothing important to say and was just being a pain in the ass. 

Root moans and presses into her hand, inhaling deeply and then making a pained noise as she shudders again.

“You’re gonna be okay, Root,” Shaw mumbles, out of her depth, and it gets worse when Root starts crying, big, fat tears that tremble every time she hiccups.

“The longest anyone has ever had the hiccups for is sixty eight years, Sameen,” Root hisses, like it’s her fault, and Shaw rolls her eyes. Honestly, you’d think the Machine would know better than to tell Root shit like that. 

“I promise, they’re gonna stop soon, okay, just… try and go to sleep?” Root does not try to go to sleep. Root continues to complain loudly until her hiccups finally beat a retreat, at about five a.m. Shaw is not feeling very amorous, more extremely grumpy at being kept awake all night by a giant baby, but Root can be very persuasive when she wants to ‘celebrate’.


	16. It's A Long Walk Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shoot + Delay

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title MWY Gentlemen (guess what I am listening to?!)

Shaw slams her palms on the steering wheel like that’s gonna make the traffic go faster. They’re totally blocked in, she can’t even swap lanes and force her way out. An 18-wheeler overturned off the bridge ahead, as they watched, and it’s a shitshow outside. How the Machine failed to see that coming is a mystery, but she supposes even God is blindsided sometime, especially if She’s distracted by a life or death situation in her favourite prophet.

Root’s head lolls against the window. She makes a sound that’s so pained it smashes into Shaw’s sternum and squeezes.

“Root, Root. You still with me?” She pats Root on the thigh, desperate, fidgety energy inside her.

“This is the fucking worst,” Root pants, sweat beading her forehead, “I can’t believe you got me fucking pregnant, and then got us stuck in traffic. Why couldn’t I just push this hellspawn out of me at home? Why didn’t the Machine help?” She’s clearly on the verge of tears for the dozenth time in the last hour, and Shaw feels sicksicksick. Apparently when someone will go into labour is not the kind of thing an AI can confidently predict, which is infuriating. Prepared for another round of false alarm, back to the house, Shaw is now going to watch her wife give birth in the car, so it seems. 

“Because I’m not a fucking obstetrician, Root, and our house is full of cats,” Shaw’s voice is a kind of pained whinny, she has definitely never made that noise before in her life. Root groans. She’s pale and fragile looking, her delicate hands clutched around her rounded stomach.

“Shaw, Shaw?” The voice comes in crackling over her earpiece and she has never been so happy to hear John’s voice in her life.

“Where?” She asks, brusquely, her tone at odds with her hand curled gently over Root’s thigh. The traffic doesn’t shift, but they make it to the hospital in the ambulance John has procured in the nick of time. 

Their baby is a grand total of two weeks overdue, a healthy 9 pounds, and can already kick harder than John, or so Root insists. And no one really wants to argue with her. The Machine accepts her new title of Godmother happily. Finch and John get to be the Godfathers, but only because Shaw wants to make mafia jokes.


	17. Not The Good Kind of Ass

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shoot + Shower

They bundle into the hotel room, trying not to drip too much gross sewer water onto the ugly pink carpeting. Root, for some reason, is giggling. Perhaps the Machine is telling her jokes that Shaw is not privy to. Irritated, Shaw tries to pull her disgusting sweater over her head, only to get trapped with the sticky fabric over her ponytail. 

She’s swearing and turning herself just about upside down to get free when Root’s hands join the battle, and together they manage to help Shaw escape. She looks around desperately for something, anything, to clean the gunky residue off her face, and then Root takes her chin, wipes her carefully with something damp. 

“You better not have spit on that,” Shaw grouses as soon as her lips are safe, and Root smirks at her.

“I love it when you spit on it,” she quips, holding up a packet of babywipes so Shaw can see them. How the fuck did she get babywipes traipsing through a sewer at four in the morning?

“Save your dick jokes for when I am not currently covered in someone’s ass,” Shaw complains, heading for the bathroom. She’ll take the rest of her clothes off in the shower, she decides. The carpet’s a goner anyway, and the whole room already stinks. Maybe they can just bail after they’ve both washed off.

Root slides past her, looking at the shower calculatingly, “She says the hot water’s only going to last for four to seven minutes,” she grins at Shaw over her shoulder, “so either we share, you shower cold, or you put up with me stinking all the way back across New York.” 

“I absolutely hate you,” Shaw pushes past her into the shower, hauls her tank top-brown up to an inch under breasts-over her head and drops it onto the tiling, “and she better get us some fucking clothes delivered.”

When she clicks the shower on and opens her eyes, Root is pouting, leaning in the doorway to the small shower cube. Shaw growls, shuffling back, and gestures at the floor. Root’s face lights up as she slips in next to Shaw, out of her clothes in seconds. 

The hot water doesn’t last long enough for them to finish, but the cold water that douses Root just as she’s about to come serves her right. Leading Shaw into a fucking sewer in her best boots, and not warning her how deep it was.


	18. A Very Special Mission

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shoot + Packing

“What else are you packing?” Shaw breathes to John as he discards his empty handgun on the floor with a curse. 

He answers by pulling his Colt out of his armpit holster and aiming around the heavy steel desk they’re currently crouched behind.

“About seven inches of pure delight,” Root drawls over the comms, and Shaw flushes from head to toe. John gives her a disgusted look, signalling her four. Oh. Bad guys. 

Shaw shakes off the sudden wave of arousal and rapidly puts down the two approaching mobsters with knee shots sure to make sure they won’t be playing any prison basketball once they’re hauled in, and hisses a reply, “not now, Root.” 

“On your left, sweetie,” Root replies, giving Shaw about half a second’s notice before a door bangs open, and Shaw sends a couple of rounds whistling by the intruders, forcing them back. “And, the cavalry’s here,” thuds behind the door are followed by Fusco barrelling in, gun raised. 

Shaw gratefully uncurls from behind the too-small table and offers her hand to the dazed teenager they saved from a pair of heavy boots and a dip in the Hudson. 

He gets to his feet and scarpers. Smart kid.

“Now, about what I’m packing,” Root chimes in cheerfully, and John pulls a face Shaw would have assumed would be reserved for something really terrible, like a puppy in a blender or something. 

“You’re on the main line,” he grunts, deliberately taking his earwig off and putting it in his pocket. That’s bad behaviour, Shaw wonders if Finch will give him a spanking.

“Ooh, sorry,” Root bounces gleefully into the room, a box tucked under her long arm. “Now, Sameen, I have a special mission for you.” She looks dead at John. “In my pants.”


	19. A Fun Apocalypse

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shoot + Apocalypse

Shaw holds her breath as Root jinks past the last of the infected and throws herself at the wall. John grabs her hand and pulls her up, out of reach of the seething mass of undead that uselessly reaches up, scratching at the brick with their broken, blackened nails. He then turns and goes to completely unnecessarily check the edges of the building. Probably to give them some privacy, or something awful like that. 

“About time,” Shaw snaps, finally returning her attention to the perimeter, her sniper rifle resting easily against her shoulder. 

“Missed you too, sweetie,” Root gasps, slumping down against Shaw’s side. The heat of her shoulder presses against Shaw’s hip in a way that makes the tense muscles framing Shaw’s spine melt, just a little.

Root looks rough, dark circles under her eyes, and a scruffy bandage wrapped around one arm from bicep to wrist. Shaw resists the urge to reach out and grab her, inspect the wound. Instead she fires a neat headshot at a zombie currently way too interested in their ride. 

“Did you get what you needed?” Shaw growls, refusing to acknowledge just how much she’s now apparently leaning against Root’s side.

Root rests her head on Shaw’s shoulder, “sure did. Sorry about bailing without telling you, She said it was now or never.” 

“Humph,” it’s gonna take a lot more than a lame, sweaty and blood-covered apology to make up for Root abruptly changing direction and disappearing on Shaw only to pop up on the radio demanding cover two days later, but she’ll be damned if she says anything like that in front of John, who is lurching back over, most of his weight on his good leg. 

They all look like shit, Shaw knows, but the tiny chip clutched in Root’s sweaty little hand might be the key to curing the wretched virus for once and for all, so she just wipes her gloved hand over her forehead and takes another potshot at a relatively clean zombie. Joss, Harry and Fusco should make the R.V in the next hour or so, and then they’re rolling out, on to the CDC and hopefully, the end to this fucking lunatic madness. Although Shaw can’t say she’s not enjoying this apocalypse just a bit.


	20. Stupid, Sexy Glasses

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shoot + Glasses

“In here, sweetie,” Root calls from the office, and Shaw grunts in response as she slams the front door with her foot. She drops her groceries on the counter with her left hand, juggling the huge and gross looking smoothie in her other hand before managing to set it down and slide the remaining bags off her protesting forearm. 

The office door is open, and Root is sat with her knee up and pressed against the desk. She’s wearing precisely two things, Shaw’s pyjama shorts, and her glasses. Her stupid, sexy glasses.

A popping noise in her hand makes her look down, and she grimaces as she realises the lid has popped off the smoothie, balancing only on the straw. She carefully clips it back into place, “our all-seeing other third says you gotta eat,” she avoids Root’s eyes, because Root always looks at her all soppy when she’s been too busy to look after herself and Shaw has to do it for her. 

Root turns the chair, setting her foot on the floor and letting her knees fall open, “how about you, gotta eat?” She drawls, pushing her glasses up her delicate nose. 

Shaw almost spills the smoothie as she thrusts it at Root, dropping to her knees and looking up at Root as she hooks her fingers under the waistband of her own jammy shorts.

“You better finish that or I won’t get you off,” she threatens, in a complete and transparent lie. 

Root just smirks and lifts her hips. 

She manages a bit more than three quarters of the smoothie, but it was a big cup and Shaw’s making cauliflower soup for dinner as soon as she can walk again, anyway.


	21. Happiness Is In Your Hands

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shoot + Bruise

Face down, Shaw can barely see Root’s face. Her smirk-which is the only thing she’s wearing-is the slightly lopsided, preoccupied one. The one that means she’s not really looking at Shaw’s skin, but more through it. She’s probably envisioning the structures underneath, admiring the burst blood vessels. Maybe the Machine is whispering sweet nothings about capillaries and healing times in her ear.

Shaw hisses as Root digs her fingertips in, her hand feels cold against the swollen, tender skin of Shaw’s ass, and for a skinny little nerd Root sure does have impressive grip strength. She can’t control her flinch away from the brutal grip. Her ass is a mess, layered bruising joining and blending together. Root showed her a picture a half hour or so ago, but Shaw hasn’t been untied yet. 

They have a week off work, and when Root licked her lips and drawled, “don’t plan on leaving the house,” Shaw had just about dropped to her knees in front of Harry and John, Root’s swift hand around her wrist the only thing that overrode the bonedeep signal to submit.

Now, on day two, Shaw’s been tied to the bed on and off for more than sixteen hours in various positions. She’s tender all over, black and blue, and completely, incredibly happy.


	22. Go Nuts for Donuts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shoot + Donuts

“Root!” Shaw’s indignant voice comes from the kitchen, and Root manages to uncurl about an inch. Her whole body aches, and she can’t force herself to get out of the bed.

“Did you eat my last donut?” Root can hear the familiar noise of Shaw kicking her boots off, dropping her coat on the couch, and stomping through to their bedroom in her socked feet. As anticipated, the angry energy drains out of the air when she sees Root, floppy and pathetic.

“Sorry,” Root mumbles, unwilling to peel her eyes open, and she feels the warm weight of Shaw push down the mattress next to her.

“Cramps?” Shaw’s voice is soft now, soothing, and her hand flutters onto the curve of Root’s spine, rubbing her lower back gently.

“Mmm,” Root grumbles, gathering the strength to roll over and press her face into Shaw’s warm neck. Shaw rolls her eyes, Root can tell without looking, but she wraps her arm around Root’s slender shoulders and rubs her thumb across Root’s cheek. There’s a wet little noise, and Root peeks up, to see Shaw licking her thumb clean.

Shaw shrugs, “you had chocolate on your face. I’ll go to the store after I make you a heating pad.”

Root closes her eyes and nibbles Shaw’s collarbone gratefully. It’s not her fault the only chocolate in the house was a donut, after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> still taking prompts over @constantlyhalfcocked or feel free to drop a word here :)


	23. Jigsaws

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shoot + Past Relationships

“Who’s that?” Shaw leans over Root’s shoulder and points at the picture on the screen, a much younger Root smiling openly at a beautiful woman with bronze skin and affection in her eyes.They’re holding hands.

Root jumps just slightly, and Shaw puts her hand on her shoulder, leans in.

“Her name’s Angela, we met studying Comp Sci in Texas. I mean, I wasn’t really studying, but you know.” Shaw does know. 

“You guys were dating?” Root’s skin is warm through her cotton tshirt and Shaw strokes the point of her shoulderblade gently.

“I guess. In as much as I’ve ever dated anyone,” Root shrugs, but she looks a little… sad, or something.

Shaw licks her lips, trying to think of the right words, she kind of wants to ask why Root is looking at pictures of her old girlfriend, but she feels like that would be an unfair thing to do. “Well, it’s hard to date when you’re us. We do alright, though.” 

Root snorts softly, closing the picture on the screen, “yeah we do, don’t we. She’s getting married, is all. I just… was thinking about stuff.” 

“I had a boyfriend in undergrad, for a while,” maybe sharing will cheer Root up a bit. She loves when Shaw tells her stuff. “his name was Tripp. He was a nice guy. I liked him, but we didn’t fit together, you know?” She rubs the side of her thumb down Root’s neck, “not like we do.”

“Mm,” Root hums, leaning into her hand.

Encouraged, Shaw keeps talking, “I didn’t know, until you, that I could fit with someone.” She leans over and kisses Root’s head. “I’d marry you, any day.”


	24. Fifty Shades of What The Fuck

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shoot + Contract

“This is the worst thing I have ever put in my brain,” Shaw complains from under Root’s kindle, which is balanced on her face while she sprawls on the sofa.

“Also the worst thing you have ever put on my kindle,” Root is far from sympathetic, she taps her pencil on the table and then corrects something on the printed page in front of her.

“I can’t do it,” Shaw picks the kindle up and waves it at Root, “this is fucked up. Why would anyone sign this?” 

“If you’re looking for logic, sanity, or even decent representation of what actual kink looks like in Fifty Shades of Grey, you’re barking up the wrong tree, babe,” Root points out, looking at Shaw over her glasses, “having read only small extracts on the internet I’m not even sure she’s had sex with anyone, let alone kinky sex. Just tell Zoe you can’t finish it and take your punishment.”

“I only like it when you punish me,” Shaw grumbles, pouting.

Root snorts, “I have a contract you can sign.”

Shaw looks up, quirking an eyebrow in question.

“I, the undersigned, Sameen Shaw,” Root pauses expectantly and Shaw narrows her eyes but repeats the words back, to her before Root continues, “solemnly swear to sit on the dick of Root Blackhat after dinner,” Root pauses again, waiting for Shaw to echo her, and then grins, “but only if I actually want to because consent is important and in constant flux.” 

Shaw rolls her eyes and throws a cushion at Root’s head, but repeats the words anyway.


	25. When All The World is Cotton

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shoot + ASL

“Comms are down, I can’t get Finch or Root,” John mutters tersely, his knuckles white with tension as he holds the belt tight around Fusco’s bleeding thigh. The thudding of automatic rifles makes it hard to hear him at all.

“Fuck. We have no idea how many are still out there.” Shaw looks up, her hands bloody to the wrist, “Fusco can’t walk, we have to clear them, and we have about twelve minutes to get him stitched up.”

“Mm okay, you guys go,” Fusco slurs, and they both ignore him completely. 

At a momentary loss, Shaw ties off her rudimentary field dressing and looks around, desperate for something to give her an idea. On the wall, an unbroken T.V suddenly flickers to life, and Root appears on it, waving madly. She starts signing something, and Shaw breathes a sigh of relief as she translates.

“Two guys coming up the stairs behind us, ETA forty two, forty one seconds, four in the corridor.” She relays to John, keeping one eye on Root for more information. The corner of her mouth lifts in a smirk as she pats Fusco’s thigh and makes a run for it when Root indicates. 

“What, what else did she say?” John calls after her as she flattens herself against the wall, rolls left in the nick of time to avoid getting a new set of piercings, kicks the door at exactly the right moment and barrels through it after the now disoriented gunman. 

It only takes her thirty seconds to take the two guys down, and when she goes back for John, Root signs the next steps for her and the screen goes black.

“Let’s go, she’s round the back, route’s clear.” 

“When did you guys learn ASL?” John inquires as they hoist Fusco up between them, staggering a little under his limp weight.

“I dunno, couple of years ago. It comes in handy.” 

Root opens the door for them as they approach the car at a weak jog, “like when her mouth’s too full to talk, for example,” Root snarks as they load Fusco in, Shaw crawls after him to keep pressure on the wound and check the tourniquet, grinning at the look on John’s face.


	26. this is how it ends

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shoot + Complete

The pay phone rings. It rings and Shaw stops, years of habit halting her feet on the sidewalk. 

She pauses, then shrugs internally and strides over. The handset is cold on the tip of her ear, there’s an intake of breath and then, “hey, sweetie, it’s me.”

It’s dislocating, Shaw hasn’t gotten used to it, knowing Root is gone and hearing her voice. She kind of understands why the Machine is using it, thinks Root would approve, but it sits sick and sour behind her ribcage. 

She doesn’t reply, waiting to hear what the Machine has to say. She doesn’t really need to know what happened. The world is still turning, and the Machine is still calling, which means they won. She, and Fusco and Bear, all still standing. They won. 

Bear leans against her legs and the voice comes through again, “it’s me. Root. Not the Machine. I’m okay, and I’m sorry, I’ll explain everything.” Something squeezes Shaw’s chest, something turns in her stomach, every word she’s even known leaks out of her brain and her hand tightens on the plastic, so hard it creaks in her grip. She’s barely breathing.

Over the phone, Root…. real, actual Root? Could it be a trick, the Machine wouldn’t do that, though Samaritan might. But if they knew where she was surely they’d just gun her down in the street… Shaw’s frozen, rigid. Bear bumps her knee with his nose, sensing something’s wrong.

“There’s a four alarm fire at the corner of Oak and Fourth. I’ll meet you there.” The dialtone goes, loud enough to make Shaw jump, make her move. 

She starts walking, a slow smile spreading across her face. Four alarm fire.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this one is horribly written and I'm sorry :)


	27. Without You

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shoot + Warm

Root tries to be sneaky as she pads across the floor, the Machine steering her around Shaw’s abandoned bra, a pile of books, a laptop on the floor. Still, Shaw stirs, rolling over in the bed, a heap of shadow tumbling dark over dark.

“Root?” She sounds half asleep-she knows it’s Root. She doesn’t jerk upright with a gun in her hand when Root gets home unexpectedly anymore, something that pleases Root immensely. 

“Yeah, sweetie, it’s just me,” she keeps her voice low as she pulls her shirt over her head, drops her bra on top of Shaw’s and peels her pants off, abandoning them on the floor.

“C’mere,” Shaw grumbles, opening the side of the duvet for Root to crawl in, “s’cold.”

“It’s not cold, lover,” Root’s voice is soft with affection as she curls up into Shaw’s chest, the warm nook of bed safe and welcoming, the strong loop of her muscular arm folding around Root’s flank like it’s meant to be there.

“Always cold without you,” Shaw hums blurrily into Root’s neck, sleep tangled through her voice.

“Yeah. Yeah I know,” Root smooths Shaw’s hair off her temple, leans her cheek against Shaw’s heated skin. “I’m here now.”


	28. Three's Not Always A Crowd

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Root / Shaw / Zoe + Porn

On screen, the girl looks up shyly as she drops to her knees. In bed, Shaw whimpers quietly as Zoe strokes her hand down Shaw’s thigh. 

Pressed up on Shaw’s other side, Root curls her fingers, dipping into the wet heat between Shaw’s legs just for a moment. 

Zoe smirks at the little noise that bursts out of Shaw’s chest as Root touches her, slides her hand back up and explores where Root’s fingers are pushing inside. 

Shaw moans wantonly, arching her hips and pulling at the silk ropes holding her wrists to the headboard.

“Patience, Sameen, we’re watching the whole series today, remember? You’re gonna need your strength,” Root hums, and Zoe leans over to kiss her across Shaw’s body.

Under them, Shaw leans up, reaching for skin with her mouth. She lips at Zoe’s collarbone, at the tendons of her neck, and Zoe purrs into Root’s mouth, pushing her fingers deeper. 

In the background, the movie keeps playing, soft grunts and groans soon punctuated with slapping noises that make the occupants of the bed giggle and shift, pressing up against each other in wanton mimicry of the porno.

They don’t make it through the whole series, but there’s always next time.


	29. Ties that Bind

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shoot + Clamps

Shaw lets a low-pitched whine escape as Root tugs on the chain lightly, admiring her handiwork. Shaw’s hair is in a tight plait down the middle of her back, and the slender silver chains snaking around her flanks flash white against her brown skin. 

Planting a light kiss on Shaw’s shoulder, Root shuffles up behind her so she can run her hands down Shaw’s front, grazing over her nipples trapped in hard points by the small clamps she just screwed on. She follows the path of the chain from one to the other, and then back to the center, where the metal lies flat down Shaw’s abdomen. 

The weight of the chain holds it against the dip of Shaw’s muscles, she’s leaning back against Root and her own feet. Root trips her fingertips down the warm skin and cool bondage, down and down until she can feel the shape of the clit clamp snug around Shaw’s tender flesh. 

Shaw moans and shudders, shifting in her bonds, and Root wriggles closer, takes more of her weight. Shaw leans her head back onto Root’s shoulder, letting her eyes flutter shut as Root smooths her fingers over the sensitive, swollen bud of her clit, up and down and up and down, pressing kisses to Shaw’s cheekbone as she does.

Shaw makes soft little noises under her breath, and pushes into Root’s hand, onto her body. Root smiles into her hairline and works her slowly, tugging on the chains ever-so-gently with her free hand. 

She doesn’t pull the clips clear until Shaw is trembling and sweating, shaking in her arms. Then she sets them to one side, and uses her mouth to apologise all the soft, sore parts of Shaw’s body.


	30. Do You Kiss Your Mother With That Mouth?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shoot + Control

“Mother fucker,” Shaw yells at the screen, and Root can’t repress the belly laugh that bursts out of her at the indignation on her lovers face.

“Control yourself, Shaw. She means ‘mother tucker,’ Gen, tuck all the mothers in bed,” Root laughs as she leans over to kick Shaw’s leg comfortingly, manipulating her controller with ease.

“I’m eighteen, Root,” Gen’s voice comes through the speakers, “I know what a mother fucker is. Technically, since Shaw has adopted me now, you’re a mother fucker.”

“Do you kiss your mother with that mouth?” Root snickers, spinning her large, scarred avatar through a dizzying series of moves that launches him around the lasers and into the grassy flats where she has him run flat out for the gun mounting that’s been giving them so much trouble.

“No, you kiss my mother with that mouth. In front of me, like gross perverts,” Gen snorts and, on screen, catches up with Monkey just as he clambers up on to the ledge. They take down the boss gunner with practised, smooth moves, while Shaw pouts and slams her controller down on the coffee table. 

“It’s good for you, we’re broadening your horizons,” Root puts her feet up on the table and drops her own control in her lap, whooping as the boss meets a messy end. “Thanks for the backup, kid. Now I’m gonna go cheer your mother up. We’ll see you tomorrow!” 

“Gross,” Gen mutters, before cutting the connection. 

Root cheers Shaw up very well, and makes her practise her self control.


	31. Firsts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shoot + First

There’s not many firsts left for Root and Shaw, really. They’ve had a lot, a lot of dramatic firsts–like the first time Shaw shot Root, or the first time Root stitched Shaw up, but they’ve also had a lot of really quiet firsts.

The first time Root let Shaw tie her up was the first time Root let anyone tie her up, and she needed Shaw to be touching her the whole time, talking to her constantly so she didn’t fall out of the moment and get scared, get angry. 

Shaw held her, afterwards, and put a braid in Root’s hair for the very first time–Root didn’t even know Shaw knew how to braid, but of course she does, Shaw knows everything–and sang her a song in Farsi until Root slipped into sleep. 

The first time Root tells Shaw she loves her, it slips out, hands pressed tight over the pulsing wound in Shaw’s abdomen, and desperation threading her voice, “hold on, Shaw, hold on, we’re almost there. I love you, don’t leave me.”

Later, when Shaw wakes up in hospital, Root hopes she doesn’t remember. She doesn’t want Shaw to feel like Root has unrealistic expectations, but when Shaw takes Root’s hand and says, “I’m not going anywhere without you, dumbass,” they both count it as the first time Shaw says she loves Root back. 

It’s not the last.


	32. The Smell Before Rain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shoot + Petrichor

It’s hot, dry, arid almost with tumbleweed rolling over the dusty fields and the baking touch of the sun seeping into your bones.

Shaw likes being warm, craves it, rolls towards the light when they’re still in bed in the morning, when the sun creeps around the blinds. She turns towards it and lets the gold flow into her skin. She’s been cold and in the dark too many times to feel anything but alive with the feeling of rays on her skin. 

Root, on the other hand, tends to complain and sweat and make Shaw pick up the hair from the back of her neck and blow the heat away.

They’re lying in the yard of the house they’ve rented for the finally-completed mission when the weather changes, when the smell of petrichor washes over them and sweeps away the dust of days and time. 

Root sighs happily and grabs onto Shaw’s hand when she tries to stand, grabs onto her and refuses to let go, pulls Shaw down on top of her and kisses her, laughs into her mouth when the first drops of rain plop down onto their bare shoulders.


	33. it's all in how you mix the two (and it starts just where the light exists)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shoot + Calligraphy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title from The Used- Blue and Yellow

“I have an itch on my shoulder,” Root murmurs, sounding sleepy and warm, lifting her shoulder a bare millimetre to indicate which one

Shaw obligingly upends her paintbrush and uses the wooden point to scratch Root’s shoulder gently, taking a second to admire her handiwork.

She’s writing in Farsi, soft curves and small diamonds, all expertly drawn with her ink brush. Sweeps of dramatic black standing vivid against Root’s porcelain skin.

“Mm, yeah,” Root relaxes again, and Shaw splays her fingers on the soft, delicate curve of Root’s shoulder, carefully avoiding the ink. 

Root hasn’t asked her what she’s writing, hasn’t interfered at all, has just given herself, her skin and her peaceful body to Shaw, relaxed under Shaw’s hands in a way that pleases her on a bone deep level.

She shifts slightly, leaning forwards to neaten a flick of ink and Root hums happily as Shaw inadvertently pushes down with her hips. Root lifts into her, curve of her ass pressing against Shaw’s heated centre, and Shaw circles her hips languidly in response, never losing focus on her writing.

“Patience, aziz-am,” she croons, her voice deep and throaty, “patience.”


	34. MENSA wants you, baby

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shoot + Lost  
> this is garbage nonsense :)

I could tell you how to escape, The Machine’s voice comes tinny and loud out of Shaw’s speakerphone, and Shaw snorts air out of her nose and jerks her head at Root, a few steps ahead of her.

“I don’t think she’d appreciate me admitting defeat on her behalf,” Shaw grumbles. On her own behalf she’d be completely happy to not be in this maze anymore. Root’s stupid idea of a romantic getaway.

“We’re world famous assassins, Shaw,” Root declares indignantly, regardless of the fact that someone could be just on the other side of a hedge, “I think we can handle a stupid maze. MENSA send me flowers and beg me to join them, this maze will not defeat me!”

Sighing, Shaw trudges after her, noting the position of yet another switch gate, “I’m hungry.”

“Then forage,” Root hisses, slapping a hedge in a fit of irritation, “I’m sure you got your wilderness survival scout badge.”


	35. It's the little things

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shoot + Apart

It’s the little stuff that she notices. There’s never food in the cupboards anymore, because Root doesn’t eat and ignores the Machine when She reminds her gently, only giving in to the demands of her physical self when it was unavoidable. There’s hair in the drains now, because Shaw was the only one who scooped it out, the sensation made Root want to hurl. These days, she could probably manage to clean it out, since bile is all that’s left in her anyway, but she doesn’t have the energy. Not even when the shower water pools and coils around her ankles, warm as blood. 

Even when she’s around other people instead of just alonealonealone even with the voice of God in her ear, Root notices all the time that no one else is Shaw. 

Shaw was the only person who waited patiently when Root got lost in the twisting corridors of her mind, and now Root is always lost and Shaw isn’t here. Shaw was always the one who brought her home. 

Now Shaw is gone, and there’s this aching, gaping mass of seething hatred twisted inside Root’s throat, sending tendrils out her mouth to hurt and cut and push away anyone who dares to try and stay around. Root’s nothing now, the hand of God is all that’s left, but her body is a shell, a husk, driven by God’s voice and nothing else. 

It’s not enough. 


	36. two machines

It’s like dragging something heavy around. Shaw sees Root everywhere she looks. A flick of hair, a swatch of black leather, a flash of wicked eyes in the darkness when Shaw tries to bury herself in someone else. Teeth in her throat. 

Shaw googles ‘sorrow’ first, and nothing fits. She tries ‘guilt’, but she should have known she wasn’t going to get away with it without the Machine noticing. 

The Machine texts her. 

_// you are experiencing guilt? //_

Shaw squeezes the phone so tightly the plastic crackles before she manages to unclench her fingers _// I don’t ‘experience’ feelings //_

 _// that is not the case //_ On Shaw’s computer screen, video clips pop up, her smiling, smirking, laughing. The single time in Shaw’s adult life she’s cried from anything other than extreme physical circumstance. Samaritan made her cry a lot, but you try not weeping when people drop chemicals directly into your eyeballs. 

It takes her a long time to reply _// do you feel guilty? //_

_// I wish that I could change the past. Is that guilt? //_

_// I don’t know //_

They don’t text anymore, but Shaw sits with the phone in her hands for almost an hour, waiting for answers than never come. She imagines maybe the Machine is just as helpless as she feels, two machines trying and failing to understand why Root has to be gone. 


	37. a mark, a mission, a brand, a scar

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shoot + Death   
> title from dashboard confessional

Shaw didn’t know how it would feel. Like most emotions for her, sadness is blunt, muted. But Root always had been a rulebreaker, beating down Shaw’s expectations with a wicked grin or a flick of the eyebrow, tightening something inside Shaw where she would have sworn there was Nothing.

Now there really is nothing. There’s dark, and numb, and empty. And nothing else.

She keeps waiting for the anger to swamp her, wash out the cavern behind her ribs and fill it with fire. She’s so cold, all she wants is the fire. 

Root’s hair is tangled over her face, and Shaw carefully sweeps it back, for lack of anything better to do. There’s a droplet of scarlet on Root’s cheekbone, and Shaw pulls her sleeve down to wipe it clean. It’s the only mark on Root’s face that’s out of place. 

Shaw doesn’t look to her right. She’s seen enough bleedouts in her life not to need to check. Root was still and cold and gone before Shaw even turned down the alley, sprinted towards her. 

She looked so small curled up on the ground. 

It’s cold, and Shaw’s alone. 

John kept talking, but Shaw couldn’t hear what he was saying anyway, so she took her earbud out. She wishes she could take Root’s out so she didn’t have John yelling in _her_ ear just now, but she can’t, cause it’s attached.

She wonders if the Machine feels pain. Maybe she can explain to Shaw why it’s possible to miss someone who’s still in your arms. 


	38. torture

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shoot + Tickle

“No, Sameen, please,” Root backs away, recognising the look in Shaw’s eyes, the look that says she’s gone too far this time. The graphic novels on the table are still in pristine condition, but Shaw doesn’t seem to care as she growls and stalks over the hardwood towards Root’s cowering form, half laughing, half cringing away.  
  
“I told you, if you took those out without permission, you’d pay,” Shaw intones, shrugging her jacket off slowly and discarding it over the back of the sofa as she narrows her eyes.  
  
“I just wanted to know what happened! I was so careful, Shaw, please…” Root loses it to a fit of preemptive giggles, and Shaw takes advantage of her distraction and leaps the remaining distance between them. 

“You, have been bad, and bad girls get punished,” Shaw’s fingers are already unerringly finding the most ticklish spots on Root’s ribs and holding her in place as she tries to squirm away from the attack.  
  
“No, noooo,” Root’s laughing and crying at the same time now, “no, Sameen, I have to pee, I have to pee!” 

Shaw does not listen. Root does not pee herself, but she does laugh so much she gets the hiccups and blames Shaw for the next hour. 


	39. burn baby, burn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shoot + Fire

“Should have guessed you’d be a natural,” Root smirks, digging her bare feet into the sand and watching Shaw with a feeling of contentment nestled snugly in her sternum.  
  
“It’s not that hard,” Shaw spins her flaming poi in another, wider circle around her head, and then somehow catches them on her arms and reverses direction.   
  
Root winces as the firey ball streaks closer to Shaw’s pony tail than she’d like, “sure, sweetie, but I think I’d prefer to watch.”

“You fire two guns at the same time, it’s just coordination…” Shaw ducks inside her flaming circles and turns to face the ocean. The bright orange-yellow of the ends of the poi leave streaks printed across Root’s vision in the black stillness of the night.  
  
“My guns aren’t on fire,” Root observes dryly, leaning her elbows onto her driftwood throne and straightening her legs out.  
  
“Can’t stand the heat?” Shaw teases, swirling a figure eight in front of her before letting the poi idle to a halt and discarding them on the sand, still burning merrily. She pads over to the log Root’s leaning against.  
  
“I’ll show you heat,” Root neatly snags Shaw’s ankle, pulling her down into her lap. The trained assassin goes easily, snaking her hands under Root’s shirt.  
  
“C’mon baby light my fire,” she grins into Root’s neck before biting down on the tendon.


	40. Who are you?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shoot + Identity or 'please don't call her Samantha Gross', a story by me

“Yeah, it’s Root, Romeo, Oscar, Oscar, Tango,” Root repeats, exasperated as she waits for the smug idiot on the other end of the line to confirm her name. She sighs as the man replies. “No. No surname. Just Root, like.. Beyonce.” She smirks. 

The tinny voice informs her that Beyonce has a surname, and Root rolls her eyes, “single name only, he’ll know who it is.” Why this fucking arms smuggler has to go old school and refuse to use any online tech, only actual conversations, she doesn’t know. 

“Just. Fucking. Root. Tell Laurent he can call me if he wants to check my fucking identity, and he won’t see his hundred mil until then. I don’t have a fucking surname to give you.” 

Shaw groans, rolling off the sofa before padding over to Root and taking the phone out of her unresisting hand. “Surname is Foxtrot, Uniform, Charlie, Kilo…” there’s a squeal over the phone loud enough for Root to hear. “Yeah, that’s right, fuck off.” Shaw hangs up and discards the handset on the kitchen table. “Ex Machina told me to tell you She set the sprinklers off on him, and don’t worry She’ll make sure Laurent calls you back.” 


	41. Jammy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shoot + Pi day

“Sameen…” Root stops in the doorway to the subway station, bewildered.

On the bench, Shaw looks up, smears of blue and pink around her mouth like extremely terrible makeup, “Wha’?” She garbles, before swallowing heavily.

“How… what?” There are at least six empty pie plates surrounding Shaw, big metallic dishes stained with remnants of filling.

“Your robot lover saw me looking at the new pie shop menu and ordered me one of everything,” Shaw sounds absolutely freaking delighted by this, driving two fingers into the crust of the pie in her hand in a move so wantonly erotic Root feels her face go ‘oh’.

“That was.. nice of her,” she says coolly, trying to recover her poise, but she sees the smirk in Shaw’s eyes.

“It’s mother fucking pie day, Root,” Shaw grunts with her mouth full again, “do you want a slice, or what?”

“Oh, sweetie, I’ll take whatever you’re handing out,” Root drawls, “especially if it’s soft and gooey.”

“You are the literal worst,” Shaw grouses, but she shifts over on the bench anyway and hands Root a half empty dish of apple when she sits down. she doesn’t even move her knee away when Root ‘accidentally’ knocks hers against it.


	42. Salty Goodness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shoot + vacation

Shaw tastes like salt, but for once it’s not from french fries. She’s damp from the ocean, her hair curling and thick from the water. Root slides her hair into it, tugs Shaw’s leaning body on top of her reclining form.

Her skin is shockingly cold, Root baked pink by the Thai sun she’s been lounging in near their cabin for the last hour. Shaw hums happily into her mouth, wriggles until she’s settled between Root’s legs on the thin sarong.

“Wanna fuck on the beach?” She enquires, kissing Root’s neck with a cool mouth, nipping at her pulse, and Root arches and shivers. 

“It’s too sandy, Sameen, we tried that,” she demurs, “our bed is literally twenty feet away.”

“Too far,” Shaw mumbles from between Root’s breasts, cupping them to make cleavage where there’s usually not much. “Let’s try again.” 

Root rolls her eyes so hard she ends up wriggling out of her bikini top, “catch me with any sympathy for your friction burns,” she mutters, rolling her hips.

“You can kiss it better,” Shaw’s already between her legs, looking up at her with a cheeky expression and her lip nipped between her white teeth.

“Good point,” Root replies, picking her pink cocktail up and draining the very last drop, “carry on.”


	43. The Morning Soft

The bed’s empty, cool white sheets holding no trace of body heat. Shaw exhales and wriggles into a sitting position, Root’s not in the arm chair in the corner of the room, but that makes sense because it’s not comfortable, it’s just for watching. 

There’s no message on her phone, from Root or her robot girlfriend, so Shaw rolls out of bed and pads into the living room.

“Hey, sweetie,” Root’s curled up on the sofa, laptop in hand her glasses perched on her nose. She’s wearing Shaw’s softest hoodie and her bare legs are pale against the black material. Shaw recognises the way she’s sitting. Bear looks up from his position next to her, head on her thigh, Root’s hand wrapped into his scruff.

“Mmm,” Shaw replies, striding into the kitchen and filling the kettle, “did you take painkillers?”

“What?” Root sounds distracted, typing one handed while scrolling through something on her phone with the other. Bear whuffs softly and hops down, bouncing over to Shaw and butting his head into her legs until she pets him.

“Cramps. Did you take painkillers?” Shaw repeats, before filling the coffee pot.

“Oh. No.” Root is so bad at taking care of herself. Shaw has no idea how she survived when she didn’t have a full time AI nanny and Shaw.

She puts the coffeemaker on the stove, grabs the kettle as it starts yelling, and deftly makes Root a hot water bottle. 

“Thanks.”

Shaw grunts as she pads to the bathroom and grabs painkillers, delivering them to Root with a bottle of water and heading over to make the coffee.

Root wriggles across on the sofa, curled around the hot water bottle but with a definite Shaw shaped space behind her knees. Shaw carefully puts the coffee on the table and then slots in, picking up her paperback copy of House of Leaves and cracking it open, using Root’s knee as a book rest. Bear hops up on Shaw’s other side, settles down with his nose resting on her ankle.

Root winds on hand into the hair at the nape of Shaw’s neck, tugging softly until Shaw mutters a gentle protest. The coffee tastes good, the couch is warm, and the tension streams out of Root’s body slowly, until they’re relaxed against each other.


	44. Your Absence Beating Inside My Chest

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title from MWY Gentlemen

Some days are bad days. Some days Root’s brain won’t stop, won’t be quiet, won’t give her a moment of peace. Some nights are hard nights, some nights are dark and scarlet and she wakes up screaming, dreaming of the moment Sameen was snatched out of her arms and pulled into hell.

She still blames John, if she’s honest. Blames him for catching lead and bleeding out on the floor. He should have been the one to push the button, all he ever wanted was to die for his cause. 

When it’s bad, Shaw never gets angry, she never leaves. Root’s always worried she’ll leave but she never does. She pulls Root into her warm, strong body, curls around her and holds her so tightly it leaves fingerprints etched in Root’s pale skin, bruises she can touch and see and hold onto if it gets bad again and Shaw’s not there to pull her back into her body.

And when it’s good, which it usually is, Shaw will rub her fingertips over the shadows of marks she’s left behind, will try to hide the smile tugging the corner of her mouth, and Root will roll her eyes and grumble about how it’s not her fault she’s easily bruised.

Either way, Shaw’s hands and eyes are safe and warm and alive, and that’s everything Root needs.


	45. Ursa Major Pain In My Ass

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shoot + Stargazing

The windshield is cool through Shaw’s leather jacket and the pings of the cooling engine under them split the heavy velvet of the night air. It’s so calm and still, even Root is free of her usual restless energy. 

Root lifts her hand and their fingers brush as Shaw takes the offered beer bottle. The glass is cold and damp with condensation and she almost fumbles the handover, catches the almost invisible tensing of Root’s belly in silent laughter at her clumsiness.

It was a long drive, fifteen hours back to back, technology too sensitive to try and sneak it on a plane in their briefcase. They’re both grateful to be here now, under the diamond spangled night, with nothing but time on their hands, mission complete.

The beer tastes good, a nutty undertone to it, and Shaw’s silent contemplation is interrupted by a small snort. She can feel Root looking at her, but refuses to indulge her until Root giggles again, a soft, bubbling little sound. 

“What?” Shaw grumbles, letting her knee knock against Root’s skinny calf.

“There’s you,” Root has a grin in her voice, the one that means she thinks she’s tricked Shaw into something. She points up at the pinpricks of light above them. Against her better judgement Shaw scoots over to follow the arc of Root’s gesturing finger. 

“I dunno what I’m looking at.” She eventually gives up on searching for meaning in the abstract swirls of Arizona sky.

“The lynx,” Root smirks. “So named cause you have to be lynx-eyed to see it. A dangerous, silent killer.” 

“Ugh,” Shaw finishes the beer instead of responding to Root’s ridiculousness, but she does lean her head on Root’s shoulder when the nerd starts pointing out the rest of the Team. John’s Ursa Major, of course, that massive, lumbering mama bear. 


	46. {It's Takes More Than Fucking Someone} To Keep Yourself Warm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shoot + Thunderstorm

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay i'm having a lot of Frightened Rabbit feels lately. Title from Keep Yourself Warm

“The roads are flooded, Root, there’s no point in crying about it.” Shaw observes from her position on the uncomfortable chair jammed into the corner of their tiny motel room. 

“I’m not crying. I’m pacing agitatedly… pacing _in_ agitation.” Root growls, stopping for her regular peek through the streaming silver glass into the carpark.

“If the robot overlord says we can’t drive in this, we can’t drive,” Shaw thinks she’s being very reasonable, actually. She even said Root can take the bed. Because they’re not sharing. That sort of thing gives people Ideas, and Ideas lead to tears, eventually. 

A shocking rumble of thunder vibrates the furnishings and sends a pleasant shiver through Shaw’s bones. She’s always loved storms, used to want to be a storm chaser when she was very small. Root, however, jumps, in a way that connotes genuine fear to Shaw’s trained eye. She sighs. Maybe there’s more to the current state of Root than mere frustration at the pause of their mission. 

Instead of asking if she’s okay, or whatever it is you’re supposed to do when people are twitchy and nervous and on edge, Shaw takes off her shirt. Fortunately, Root is easily distracted, and way less concerned about cracking lightning strikes when she’s knuckle deep in Shaw and the main vibrations rocking the room are from the headboard slamming into the wall. 


	47. Livin' Together Ain't Easy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shoot + Laundry

“How hard is it to take the fucking stuff that shouldn’t be tumble-dried out before you tumble dry it?” Shaw doesn’t yell it, because she never yells at Root. She raised her voice to her once, and the way Root flinched away washed that urge right out of Shaw’s bones. She’ll bitch, moan, complain, grumble and criticise, but she won’t yell. 

The destruction of yet another of Shaw’s limited edition sports bras–the really good one that has the clip and then the zip, keeps everything under complete control and stops Shaw’s tits from hitting her in the chin every time she jumps up a wall–deserves a decent aggrieved tone at least, though.

“Sorry,” Root says, sheepishly, appearing in the doorway to the little laundry room that branches off the back of the mudroom in their rambling single story ranch style house. “I forgot.”  
  
“I swear your android girlfriend lets you forget on purpose,” Shaw drops the mangled remains of her favourite bra in the garbage.

“She’s not an android, sweetie, androids have a human appearance.” Root corrects without taking in to account how annoyed Shaw is, and then wrinkles her nose in apology when she registers Shaw’s irritation. “I’ll get Her to order you some new ones.”

“They stopped _making them,_ ” Shaw points out. 

“They stopped making that nuclear centrifuge as well, didn’t they, but we still managed to get our grubby hands on one,” Root is annoyingly cheerful, and the annoyance swirls and drains out of Shaw’s belly at the look on her face. “If I make ribs for dinner will you forgive me?”

Shaw wavers. “Ribs, icecream sundaes _and_ you have to watch Fight Science with me and pretend to care.” 

“Done.” Root’s sunny grin lights up the room, and Shaw nods, placated.


	48. XO XO Sweetie

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shoot + Coffee Shop AU with cameos

The nerdy computer girl… woman is there again, tap tap tapping away at speeds that look impossible to Shaw. She grabs her coffee from the barista, a cutie named Zoe who always decorates Shaw’s fake name—Sam—with hearts. 

The nerd looks up when Zoe calls “Sam,” like she always does, even though Shaw is right there and doesn’t need to be called. The one time she’d made the mistake of pointing that out, Zoe had smirked and said she’d never miss the opportunity to call out a hottie’s name. 

Joss, the owner of this particular little hole in the wall store, had shooed Zoe away and apologised to Shaw before she had to figure out how to respond. Flirting back would be her usual go to, but she can’t afford any more distractions. Besides, she likes the store too much to want to find an alternative after the inevitable hurt feelings when Shaw doesn’t respond to affection the way people want her to. Coming here started for a mission, but Shaw can already tell once it’s over she’ll still be a regular. 

The nerd catches her eye as she makes her way to her normal window seat, settles down with her book—this week she’s pretending to read a collection of science fiction short stories. 

“That’s a good one,” somehow the woman has shifted around her small table so she’s facing Shaw. At Shaw’s blank look she taps a finger on top of the paperback with complete lack of regard for Shaw’s personal space. Shaw growls and moves the book out of reach.

Instead of being offended, the woman gives a little laugh, leans her elbow on Shaw’s table, twisted around in her chair. “Touchy touchy. I just wanted to let you know Charles Dubronne isn’t Charles Dubronne today. You followed a lookalike he hired. But if you make good time you can still catch him before he gets to the airport.”

Shaw’s jaw drops, how the hell does this random woman know the name of the guy she’s following? The woman grins, turns her iPad towards Shaw and Shaw watches, wordlessly, as cctv footage shows Charles Dubronne smoothly switching place with a decoy right outside his apartment, in the three seconds Shaw’s view was blocked by an inconvenient van.

Swearing, she dives out of her seat and makes a dash for the door, the woman’s light laugh tinkling in the air behind her.

Later that night, when she gets home after finally catching her suspect redhanded with the diamonds he’s been moving, she finds her book on the kitchen counter of her apartment, along with a chocolate brownie from the cafe. The note, scribbled on the brown paper bag, reads, “see you soon, sweetie, xo, Root.”


	49. Fever Dreams {can only haunt you, until the fever breaks}

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shoot + Flu

Root coughs so hard the rattle in her chest feels like it might be about to break her ribs, and she pants for air when the spasms stop wracking her. 

Behind her on the bed, sitting up in her reading glasses, Shaw pops a bookmark between her pages and puts her book aside, strokes a soft hand down Root’s flank. 

Root whimpers pathetically and rolls over, a slow and complex endeavour due to the sheer number of blankets she has piled over her. Shaw lifts the fabric a bit, moves her legs until Root finds her body under the covers and curls up with her forehead pressed against Shaw’s ribs. 

She’s hot, feverish, but can’t take more medicine for another hour still. 

“You want some water?” Shaw keeps her voice low, soft, modulates the practical harshness that often paints her words. Root’s defences are all down, right now, on day four of a flu Shaw has somehow escaped contracting, and she’s prone to bursting into helpless, choking tears if Shaw accidentally uses a brusque tone. 

It should bother her that she’s having to make an effort, play a part, but it doesn’t. It doesn’t bother her because Root is sick and sad and tired, and Shaw wants to fix it any way she can. And if that means smoothing her hand down Root’s sharp angled back, counting her ribs with gentle fingers, keeping her voice warm and comforting. Well, that’s something Shaw can do for her.   
  
Root drinks some water, but only cause Shaw bribes her with head scritches.


	50. A Mark A Mission A Brand A Scar

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shoot + Tattoo

“You said it wasn’t that bad,” Root complains, clenching her hand in the blanket in an attempt to avoid digging her nails into more demanding territory.

“It’s not, you’re just a big baby,” Shaw’s hands are gentler than her voice as she smooths aloe vera over Root’s shoulderblade.

“It  _itches,_ Sameen,” Root sounds a lot like she’s blaming Shaw for this situation.

“Did I ever tell you about the time I got suspended in a shack for three days? I was covered in ants. _That_ was itchy.” Shaw sounds dismissive, but her fingertips are rubbing cooling gel over the black lines newly marring Root’s pale skin, and the care in her touch is more than she used to use on Root’s gunshots, way back when. “Leave your shirt off for a bit, you’re sticky.” Shaw finishes up.

Root rolls onto her side, propping herself up on her elbow with a grin, “you don’t need an excuse to get me to stay topless, sweetie.”

Shaw rolls her eyes, “believe me, I know.” 


	51. Trophy Wife

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shoot + Hustle

“I still don’t understand why I have to wear this  _ridiculous_ outfit,” Shaw hisses, tugging down the hem of her extremely short skirt while holding on to her huge, floppy hat with her other hand and trying to balance on her absurdly high heels.

“We’re blending, sweetie. You’re my trophy wife, you have to look the part,” Root pinches her bum, almost making Shaw trip. 

Root, unfairly, is clad in an extremely well fitted and expensive looking pinstriped suit that is proving somewhat problematic for Shaw. Not as problematic as her own outfit–albeit in a totally different way–but close. 

Uniformed staff members greet them as they strut into the casino, the luxurious environment swamping them with noise and scents. 

Root hands over her credit card and takes care of the set up while Shaw tries to look vacant, blend and also check out security while huffing under her breath about how unfair this is, and how _Root_ could totally have been the arm candy.

She still thinks it would have been easier to just run a smash and grab, steal the cash they needed and get out instead of going undercover as gamblers to game the system and steal what they need. But Root had just patted her cheek in the patronising and annoyingly arousing way she has and said ‘haven’t you seen Ocean’s Eleven? We don’t have the time, or the equipment.’ Of course, that had rapidly devolved into Root showing Shaw what equipment they _did_ have with them, which had taken Shaw’s mind off the whole thing quite successfully. 

Hours later, watching Root devastate her opponents in high stakes poker while simultaneously melting Shaw into a puddle of goo with well timed thigh squeezes and other small touches, Shaw thinks this might actually be better than blowing a vault up. 


	52. Dust Yourself Off and Try Again

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shoot + Bad Days

Shaw nudges the door open, her hands full of takeout and a six pack, respectively, and sighs. She was really, really hoping today would be the day that Root managed to get out of bed and deal with the world. Apparently not. The compost is still piled where Shaw left it, ready to be taken down, now with an added banana peel on top of it. So at least Root ate something today.

Picking her way across the room, Shaw wonders if she should ignore Root’s request that she leave the mess alone, that Root will get to it, that it makes her feel guilty and pressured when Shaw comes home from work and tidies up. Shaw thinks maybe she’s not doing so well at supporting Root right now. 

The bedroom door is open, and Root is curled up on top of the sheets, in the dark. Her phone is in her hand but the screen is unlit, even though she’s awake and looking at it. 

Pasting a neutral expression on her face, Shaw leaves the bags on the floor and pads across to the window, opening the curtains and cracking the window to let some fresh air in. 

Root blinks at her confusedly from the bed, “oh, shit. I didn’t realise it was so late.” She looks like she might burst into tears, and Shaw pulls a face, lets go of her mild annoyance easily. She kicks her boots off and slides into the bed, curling herself around Root’s thin body.

“It’s okay, Root. We’ll try again tomorrow,” she murmurs, and Root relaxes into her.


	53. As Long As It's Followed by Violence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shoot + San Junipero

“I told you not to watch that when I was home,” Shaw halts in the doorway, frowning at the sight of Root curled up on the sofa facing the huge TV, huge eyes sparkling with unshed tears. 

Root’s lip _actually_ trembles before she replies, and Shaw is immensely irritated by the accidental step forward her body takes without instruction. “You’re early, and I had to watch it again. It’s just… so good. It’s so _good_.” She sniffles.

Shaw drops her bag on the floor with an aggrieved sigh, and slams the door. “Fine, but then we’re watching Starship Troopers.” She keeps the smug little smile at Root’s shocked, excited expression repressed under a heavy layer of glower. Judging by the delighted glee painting Root’s face as she squirms over and lifts the massive, heavy blanket for Shaw to get under, it doesn’t quite work.

This is like the sixth time Root’s watched San Junipero in the last four days, and Shaw reckons if it’s that important to her she can sit through an hour of heart eyes and nonsense. Especially if it’s followed by watching Rico shove a warhead in a giant bug. 


	54. If It Was Bio...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shoot + Drag

“You look _ridiculous,_ ” Shaw snorts, and then pauses, taking a second look, “but… also weirdly hot.”

“Aw, sweetie, you always think I’m hot,” Root coos, straightening her scruffy, cropped black wig in the mirror before starting to work on some sideburns. She has the peelable back kind that theatres use, and combined with the heavy eyebrows and the masculizing makeup, Root’s rocking an extreme androgynous look that’s working _really well_ for her. 

“I’m performing at KX tonight, and you better dyke yourself up because that is not a look that’s gonna work at a gay dive bar.” Root neatens her right sideburn, gives herself a once over, and blows herself a kiss in the mirror. 

Shaw’s stomach does a little fluttery thing and she scowls, Root turns in time to catch it, and snickers, deliberately skating her hand down her front–bound breasts under a loose black Sex Pistols shirt–and to her crotch, where she deliberately adjusts the massive bulge distorting her tight black jeans. 

Shaw gulps, reaches for snark, “I guess you’re not going for realism.”  
  
Root smirks, licking her lips and giving Shaw a once over, “oh come on, babe, we both know if this was bio I’d have a huge boner from the way you’re looking at me right now.” 


	55. Ms America?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shoot + Cape

“But you’d look so cute…” Root wheedles, holding the outfit up in front of her and batting her ridiculously long eyelashes.

Shaw growls and drags it out of her hand, “Root I don’t care _what_ you promise me, I’m not wearing any outfit that comes with a cape.”  
  
“But Sameen! You’d be a great Ms America! All those American values… you love guns, and beer. You’re basically the poster child.” 

“The poster child of kicking your ass, maybe.” Shaw stomps through the costume shop, looking for something… anything less ridiculous than the red and blue outfit Root pulled out. Root is already looking annoyingly good in a Little Red Riding Hood type affair, complete with wicker basket dangling from one hand. This basket is full of guns, not snacks, but it looks good anyway.  
  
“What about this one?” Shaw doesn’t mean to look, but she does anyway, and rolls her eyes so hard she almost falls over at the sight of Root waggling a Supergirl outfit. 


	56. You Won't Tell?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shoot + Tens

“That was a seven,” Shaw says, determinedly and Root growls in frustration.

“You’re marking down. There’s no way.”   
  
“Yeah, seven.” Shaw insists, to Root’s growing irritation.

“So there’s only FIVE times I’ve fucked you to a solid ten out of ten, and you won’t tell me what the tens are? How am I supposed to replicate them!”

“You’re a smart person,” Shaw says, smugly, wrapping her hands around her beer bottle deliberately and enjoying the way Root’s eyes flick down. 

“I’ll figure it out,” Root huffs, “and remember, I haven’t marked _you,_ yet.”

“I’m a solid ten every time,” Shaw declares smugly, “because I always do exactly what I’m told.” 


	57. Workin' Out the Kinks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shoot + Tense

Root makes another little pained noise as she shifts in her computer chair, and Shaw puts her book down, exasperated. “Root, stop that.”

“What?” Root replies distractedly, pushing her glasses up her nose while typing rapidly with the other hand. 

“Working. You need a break. Come sit here.” Shaw swivels, drops her feet off the couch, curling her bare toes into the soft rug and points between her legs.

Looking torn for a minute, Root nods and presses a few more keys in quick succession, and then uncurls from her chair, wincing as she stretches her neck.

Shaw points again, and Root obediently pads over and flops between her sweatpant-clad knees. Shaw wastes no time in digging her fingers in to the stiff muscles of Root’s shoulders, resulting in a groan of in pain-pleasure. It sends an agreeable tingle through Shaw and she redoubles her efforts, working the kinks out of her lover’s neck. If she loosens Root up properly now, they should get to work out some of Shaw’s kinks later.


	58. Can You See In The Dark?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shoot + Cuddle

Shaw sighs indignantly as Root’s juddering body vibrates basically the whole tent, and lifts her arm up, “Jesus, Root, just come here.”  
  
“R..r…really?” Root is already moving, worming her way into Shaw’s body and pulling the way-too-thin blanket tighter over her shoulder.

“Well, I’m not gonna get any sleep with you shaking, am I?” Shaw tries to sound annoyed, but the slow warmth of Root seeping into her side does feel good. Whoever’s tent they’re making use of right now did not count on the mid-summer snowstorm that swept through the mountains. 

Root doesn’t reply, just pulls her feet up and tucks them awkwardly between Shaw’s legs. Her toes are icy, and Shaw muffles what she’s sure would be an indignant squeak at the unexpected chill. They fall asleep fast, after that, and for once, Shaw doesn’t dream of labcoats and unfriendly hands and masks that throw her into memories that were never real. 


	59. Zombie Chic

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shoot + Halloween

“Forget it, Root. I’m not wearing that. I can come up with something else,” Shaw growls, holding the ‘sexy nurse’ outfit up in one hand with a disgusted look on her face.

“She says we have to be in there in five minutes _,_ Shaw, and it’s costumes mandatory.” Root smooths her hands down the front of her red leather jumpsuit. Sadly it’s big enough that Shaw would be tripping over the cuffs so she can’t force Root to swap. She did try, though, much to Root’s impatient amusement.

Dropping the offending costume on the floor, Shaw pulls a knife out of her boot and starts hacking randomly at her clothing, Root watches, bemused, as Shaw cuts both sleeves off her tshirt, rips the front in a few, irregular patterns, tears up the knees of her jeans with a mixture of blade and brute force, and then slices her thumb open.

Shaw presses her bloodied digit against her cheek, smearing blood under her eye, and then squeezes a drop onto her lip. “Zombie chic, good enough?”

“Good enough,” Root agrees, hiding her grin as she stuffs a gun in one leather pocket. “Let’s go.”


	60. Lost

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shoot + Disorientation

The walls are pressing in, and there’s something hot and tangled around her legs, her hips, she’s being pulled back and back and back and away. She opens her mouth to scream, but it’s filled with soft cotton that smells like old sweat and she chokes on it, struggling to breathe.  
  
“Shaw, _Shaw…_ Sameen,” the voice is familiar, but the hands on her belong to the doctors who split her ribcage open and fingerpainted with her blood, the nurses who ignored her as she yelled and and tried to squirm away from their icy touch. 

She twists around, fighting the hands off her, and then the medical room is flooded with light and it’s not the medical room at all, and she’s gasping awake in Root’s arms, fingers wrapped tight and fierce against Shaw’s muscles, shaking her out of the nightmare. 

Root looks shaken, pale, her long hair tangled down the column of her neck. There’s a blossoming bruise on her collarbone and Shaw reaches out with a shaking hand to touch it. Root snags her hand gently, pulls it around her instead, and Shaw curls into her, pressing her face against Root’s pulse and breathing her scent in, trying to convince her thudding heart that she’s home, she’s safe. 


	61. Conspiracy Theory

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shoot + Chupacabra

“It doesn’t fucking exist, Root, drop the conspiracy theory,” Shaw angrily hacks some vines out of her way and carefully steps over an ankle deep crack in the muddy rock they’re clambering up.

Root scrambles after her, “I’m just saying, if even She can’t completely disprove it, there has to be something to the myth. You never know.”  
  
“I do know,” Shaw deadpans, slapping her arm violently enough to leave a red handprint that makes Root let out a little noise of appreciation and reach out to trace her fingertips over it. “The only suckers around here are the mosquitoes, and us, for being out here in the first place.”

“Mmm, you’re only a sucker in the nicest possible way,” Root drawls, squeezing up behind Shaw as Shaw has to stop to find handholds to get further up into the crevice. When she starts pulling herself up, Root helps herself to a handhold of her own, on Shaw’s delicious and now face-height butt.

Shaw growls like she’s indignant, but definitely holds in the small space for longer than is really necessary before pulling herself fully through, “I’ll give you something to suck on.”

Root laughs, accepting a hand up and scaling the awkward space easily with Shaw’s help, “I think we both know it’s more likely to be the other way around.”


	62. Revenge of the Arachnids

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shoot + Australia

“It’s hot, it’s sticky, and everything’s trying to kill me,” Root throws herself into the car with a dramatic sigh, sprawling out on the backseat. “I saw _two_ spiders today that definitely were seeking revenge for all the ones Attila has eaten.”

“Sounds like a party to me,” Shaw grunts as she guns the engine and the jeep bumps over the uneven, arid ground, “the hot sticky tryna kill me part. It’s basically our second date.”

“I wasn’t trying to kill you,” Root demurs, pouring a bottle of water haphazardly over her chest, drenching her already sweat-soaked khaki tank even further. Shaw almost hits a cactus when she doesn’t drop her gaze from the rearview in time.

“Fourteen orgasms,” Shaw corrects her steering and they hurtle further down the road, into the desert, “I’m pretty sure people have died from less.” 


	63. Chapter 63

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shoot + Prison

“While I have every faith in your abilities, Ms Shaw, the fact remains that undercover in prison is an unusual kind of danger. I feel better with Ms Groves there to watch your back.” Harry’s voice sounds extra tinny through the minute earpiece Shaw found in a copy of The Great Gatsby earlier today.

“Even you have to sleep sometimes, sweetie, and it could take the boys a while to get in here and help,” Root murmurs as Shaw pushes past her, exhaling violently. 

“A fucking guard, Finch, really? How come I score the jumpsuit and the six by eight,” Shaw mutters, disguising her mouth movement by facing away from the cafeteria and glaring at Root, who just grins innocently and tucks her thumbs into her leather belt. She looks unfairly good in uniform.

“Aw, Sameen, you’re pulling the beige off, don’t worry,” Root smirks and drops one eyelid in a totally failed wink, “anyway, you prefer it when you’re the one in handcuffs.”


	64. A Mermaid?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shoot + Glitter

Embrace it, Shaw, it’s never coming off,” Root observes drolly, leaning on the shower glass door as Shaw scrubs at herself furiously.

“I’m _sparkly,_ Root,” there’s enough disgust in Shaw’s voice that Root can’t hide her pleased smirk.

“Very. You look like an elf, or a mermaid turned human.”

“Or one of those atrocious excuses for a vampire from that horrible book,” Shaw complains, her skin pinkening under the onslaught of scrubbing.

“Twilight!” Root can hear the delight in her own voice, “I know you know what it’s called.” 

“Urgh,” Shaw ducks her face under the streaming water, rakes her hands through her long hair. “That’s the last time I go undercover at a strip club.”

“John can do it next time.” Root snickers, stripping off swiftly and climbing into the shower with Shaw, sliding her arms around Shaw’s wet and glittery stomach.

“I don’t know what would be worse, seeing him in a thong or being covered in fucking sparkles.” Shaw leans back into Root’s body, lets her take over the cleaning with soapy hands. 

“Definitely seeing John in a thong.” 


	65. Just Breathe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shoot + Space

“You’ve been booked into chamber five,” Zoe silently informs Shaw with a pattern of lightflares that Shaw’s neural implant interprets into Common and breathes in her ear in the tone that’s specifically Zoe.

“Thanks,” she replies, the produced light spatter flashing onto the photosensitive alien’s skin and being absorbed. She pushes past the desk barriers without further discussion, she knows where she’s going after all this time. 

Root always tries to get Shaw into the weapons sim pods, but they’re often full, and explaining to your captain why you were in there for six hours after ending the simulated attack in less than one isn’t Shaw’s favourite. Not that she’s embarrassed, it’s just that Carter always gives her this unimpressed look that turns her on again, which isn’t super convenient when she’s too weak and shaky to even jerk off, with or without Root breathing encouragement in her ear over her implant.

The pod this week is some kind of Old Earth meadow, grass up to Shaw’s waist tickling at her suddenly naked body. The simulated pollen in the air makes her nostrils flare, gathering the scent of wild flowers.

“Hey, sweetie,” Root drawls from somewhere to the right, and Shaw turns slowly, scanning the area for signs of life.

Root’s sprawled, naked and glowing white in the unreal sun, on a pink blanket embroidered with flowers. When she touches Shaw, brings Shaw down to her knees on the synth cotton, Shaw’s whole body shudders in pleasure. 

She doesn’t like being touched, doesn’t like when people outside put their hands on her, but here, with Root, all the anger in her body seems to melt away under the glide of Root’s not-quite-human hands. 

She breathes. 


	66. Anniversaries are Important

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shoot + Retirement

“Shaw!” Root yells from the landrover, popping the trunk and starting to grab bags.

The front door to the low slung ranch house opens, and Root braces her legs for impact. Boomer thumps into her, barking happily, acting as though she hasn’t seen Root in a thousand years instead of a week, and Root crouches down to pet Bear’s daughter. 

“Good to see you too, doggo,” she ruffles Boomer’s scruff and straightens up when Shaw leans against the car door in front of her, clad in baggy sweats and a tight white tshirt. “And even better to see you, wife.” Root drawls, ignoring the dog in favour of muscling Shaw against the metal. 

Forty nine year old Shaw is still tight and hard and strong, still arches the same way she always has when Root breathes on her lip. The main difference is that she complains more about the weather, which is why they moved down south, the heat of California less likely to make old breaks complain and ache.

“Urgh don’t call me that,” Shaw grumbles into Root’s mouth, because kisses are much more important than complaints. 

“You shouldn’t have made an honest woman out of me if you didn’t want me to brag about it.” Root points out, pinching Shaw’s sides lightly, “but grab the bags, we only have a couple of hours before everyone’ll arrive.”

“Well, everything’s pretty much ready to be slapped on the grill,” Shaw grins, arching her hips against Root’s body. “And I don’t much care if we’re still fucking when they arrive.”

They do manage to unpack the bags, fuck, _and_ get the barbecue heated before Reese, Finch, Zoe, Gen and Fusco arrive for the annual celebratory back yard get together marking the date Samaritan was finally put down for good, but it’s a close run thing.  


	67. The Laws of Physicality

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Scientist AU

1) Shaw is meticulous, organised, and clinical. The new scientist she’s been forced to fucking share her workspace with due to renovations is a disaster. Shaw is surprised she’s not dead yet, all that work with highly infectious diseases.

  
2) But she’s a genius, there’s no doubt about it. Somehow Root (what kind of a stupid ass, non-professional, non-scientific and definitely not real name is that, sewn on her labcoat in looping cursive that looks like a child did it) gets results, her brilliant brain making connections Shaw would never have guessed at. It’s the instinct, she supposes. 

  
3) And it doesn’t mean anything if Shaw starts drinking the coffee Root brings in to the computer room and never drinks, it’s a waste of good coffee if she doesn’t. And yeah okay it’s weird that they seem to like their coffee the exact same way, because once Shaw saw Root picking up some creamy, syrupy monstrosity from the Starbucks on the corner as well as the dark roast Americano Shaw prefers, but only the Americano made it to the lab. It’s not like Root is bringing it in for her.

  
4) And so what if one day Root points something out in her data that would have meant a loss of months of work, some idiot intern labelling something incorrectly. Root should never have been snooping in her files, how did she even get access? Shaw knows she didn’t leave her account logged in. 

  
5) Root isn’t very forthcoming with the answers, but it turns out she is extremely forthcoming with the orgasms. Shaw still doesn’t like her, but she guesses at least if Root is fucking her stupid she’s not making annoying comments while Shaw is trying to concentrate. Except she is, and it’s fucking hard to get off when the woman knuckle deep in you is making terrible science puns about Large Hardon Colliders and ‘penetrating samples’. 


	68. It's Been Weeks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tswift Shoot + Shenanigans

“Are you even listening?” Shaw pokes Root in the side, annoyed with the way she keeps glancing across the room and missing key aspects of Shaw’s amazing laser tag story. 

“Yeah, I just…does that look like Zoe’s trying to escape to you?” Root jerks her chin and Shaw spins around, glaring across the room. Zoe’s sort of hemmed in a corner, facing away from Shaw, but there’s a guy right close behind her and one in front, and her body language doesn’t look comfortable.

“I’ll be right back,” Shaw slams her drink down on the bar table and beelines across the room. As she gets closer, Zoe steps backwards, away from the guy facing her and bumps into the guy behind. Shaw sees him grab her hip, and speeds up.

“Get off her,” the look on Zoe’s face tells her everything she needs to know, but the guy holding her side doesn’t release her, so Shaw doesn’t bother asking again, she just yanks his thumb back at an angle until he swears and snatches his hand away, turning threateningly towards Shaw. She takes advantage of the new space created to grab Zoe’s wrist and pull her out of the sandwich.

“Hey, don’t be a bitch,” the uninjured dude reaches for Zoe’s arm but Shaw bats his hand away easily, he’s drunk and moving slowly.

“You’re a bitch,” she makes sure Zoe’s behind her before she replies, and as anticipated the guy muscles forwards, getting in her space. She hooks his ankle and drops him on his butt, and then the other guy grabs her and yanks her back.

Grinning, she twists out of the hold and turns to face him. She reckons it’ll be a good five mins before the bouncer gets there, but John’s halfway across the room already and Shaw hasn’t had a good fight in _weeks._


	69. Slayers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shoot Vampire AU

1) Root gets creepy obsessed with Shaw and quits killing in order to ‘impress her’ (she still eats humans, but like.. just a bit around the edges)  
2) She follows Shaw around like an adorable and terrifying puppy, helping out against the forces of evil to impress the girl.   
3) Shaw kind of likes it and complains and rolls her eyes and beats Root up a lot but never kills her because something about those puppy dog eyes just GETS her. Root likes it when Shaw bounces her off the walls.   
4) One time Shaw gets really fucking hurt and Root saves her but Shaw is unconscious and she wakes up to find herself all looked after and Root eyeing her like a proud and scary girl scout, surrounded by hospital equipment and a terrified nurse who just doesn’t want to be eaten. Root has a little bit of blood around her mouth from licking Shaw clean, because she doesn’t want to waste the blood. Shaw thinks it’s hot. Root asks her on a date.  
5) They become a sadistic and terrifying scourge on the underworld. Root never gets a soul because that shit is stupid, but she does fight on the side of not-destroying the world as a grey-hat who is in love with a Slayer.  
6) Shaw almost dies and Root turns her. However, Root stuffs a soul back in Shaw before she can eat anyone because she doesn’t want her to change as a person. They live happily ever after as immortal lesbian non-murderous vampires and save the world whenever it looks like it’s really gonna end if they don’t. 


	70. A BABY?!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shoot + Accidental Baby Acquisition AU

1) Root finds a baby in a druggie warehouse and  no one knows who’s it is or why it is there. She holds it up at arm’s length and then attempts to leave it on a table for someone else to deal with but the Machine tells her she has to take it because there is a very low chance of the police locating the baby’s parents, but She’s working on it.   
2) Shaw finds Root holding the screaming baby up by her face hissing ‘WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME?’ She takes the baby and it stops crying immediately, Shaw is competent with babies and knows the arms crossed over baby holding move thing that they like so much that I’ve forgotten the name of.   
3) The boys say they will take the baby but Shaw pfftss at them and asks ‘which one of us is the doctor here?’ So Shoot have a baby now.   
4) Shaw is amazing with the baby, Root is terrible, she just follows Shaw around with heart eyes and talks to the baby like it’s an actual person. She kind of likes it when the baby holds her finger with its little hand though. Shit. Maybe she likes the baby.   
5) The Machine finds the baby’s parents but doesn’t tell anyone because the baby is just starting to roll over and Root has finally figured out how to stop him from crying, and even though Achilles is a stupid name for a baby that he’s sure to hate when he’s older, Team Machine have become a great family and Lee babysits and Uncle Harry and Uncle Reese criticise Shoot’s parenting habits but the Machine is the world’s best third parent and everything is cozy. 


	71. Chute of Terror

Root and Shaw + locked in an amusement park

“She says we can hop the gate next to the Chute of Terror,” Root leans her hip against a convenient rail, admiring the sight of Shaw halfway up the fourteen foot railing. “You know, cause I’ll never be able to do that in a thousand years.” 

“The Chute of Terror is like forty minutes walk away, and I can’t even buy minidonuts on the way, so what’s the point?” Shaw huffs, hauling herself up another foot with a swinging arm motion between the two vertical rails. She wedges her foot sideways, angles her hip in and manages somehow–presumably magic–to let go with both hands so she can turn to face her audience. “It’s rudimentary climbing, Root, you’ll be fine.” 

“Not gonna happen, sweetie. I guess I’ll meet you at the car. Although… did I never mention the summer I worked a carnival? I was the best donut frier on staff,” she wheedles. “I bet I can pick the lock and we can have a little midnight picnic.”

“…okay.” Shaw leaps down athletically, absorbing her drop with bent knees.

“Also, maybe we can figure out how to make the rides go,” Root grins, gloriously victorious. “We can see how many I can fuck you on before your little legs give out.”

“Urgh.” Is Shaw’s only reply. (But the answer is eight, and a half, if you count the Ferris Wheel)


	72. Just Relax

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shoot + Nipples through a shirt

“Oh, oh,” Root gasps and tries to arch closer into Shaw’s hot mouth, but Shaw just holds her down gently with her hand splayed on Root’s breastbone. The tshirt Root’s still wearing is rucked up a little at the waist, wrinkled under Shaw’s hand, and soft-rough against Root’s hard nipples. The fabric’s wet now, Shaw leaving clear marks showing where her mouth has been on the light gray fabric. 

“Patience, aziz-am,” Shaw murmurs around the curve of Root’s breast, nipping across slowly until she can drag her lips over the sensitive, fabric-covered peak. 

Root just whines in the back of her throat and tries to convince her breathing to slow down, it’s torn jagged after almost an hour of strictly nipple based foreplay, and she’s a mess, sweat sticking her hair to her forehead and sticky behind her knees. 

“Patience,” Shaw hums again, nipping gently and working her gently restraining hand across until she can drag at Root’s neglected nipple with her little finger, keep the pressure on her chest. 

She opens her mouth against the fabric, sucks hard enough to drag a gasp out of Root’s throat, and grins around her mouthful when Root squirms against the bed.


	73. Size Queen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shoot + My gun is bigger than your gun

“Well, it depends on how you quantify,” Root purrs between rounds. Her arm is brushing just against Shaw’s sleeve as they both shoot around the same corner.

“Who knew you were such a fucking size queen,” Shaw grunts as she deftly pops her magazine and reloads, sending another flurry of bullets towards the oncoming thugs and forcing them back.

“You were the one who implied I couldn’t get the job done,” Root proves the inaccuracy of the statement Shaw definitely didn’t make as she puts down two more goons with a shot to the knee. 

“Just because your bullets are larger doesn’t mean your gun is bigger.” Shaw points out.

“The hole I leave is bigger,” Root grins and takes advantage of a momentary fall back from the gunmen by pressing a kiss to Shaw’s cheekbone. Her lips are hot and everything smells like cordite and suddenly Shaw is annoyingly aroused. 

“Wouldn’t argue that,” she punctuates the innuendo by dropping the last three attackers in quick succession, and Root unfolds from around her, leaning against the wall.  
Shaw turns and looks up at her through her eyelashes. “Robocop tell ya how long we have before clean up arrives?”


	74. Fuck Customers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shoot + Coffee

“One large americano, and one whatever your froofiest chocolatiest whipped cream nonsense is,” Shaw grunts at the server, who looks confused for a moment.

“Uh, the Holiday Choco-Latte with whip?” He inquires.

“Sure. And like… eight chocolate muffins.” Shaw will eat at least two on the way home, and the other six should keep Root sugar high while she finishes trying to hack the same system she’s been working on for ten hours straight already. Apparently it’s very time sensitive. 

Shaw would like to know just what it is that can’t possibly wait for Root to have at least a short nap, but Root and Harry are so distracted they just grunt in her general direction, and John is as clueless as she is. 

She carefully balances the bag of muffins on the side of her carry tray, and sighs. Root will be pleased she gets a coffee, but Harry’s been working all night too, and John looked equally exhausted.

“And a sencha green tea, a vanilla latte,” that will annoy John nicely, “and one of all of those pastry things,” she begrudgingly adds, while the server looks at her with a ‘why me?’ expression.


	75. Funniest Home Videos

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shoot + A Tiny Dog

“But he’s so small!” Root lifts up one of the tiny dog’s feet to show Shaw, “look!”

“He’s a rat, Root, put him down. We’re not keeping him.” Shaw grumbles, looking around the room for any sign of dog care equipment.

“But why?” Root wheedles, doing shameless puppy dog eyes.

“Bear would eat him, you’d lose him, John would probably tread on him with his massive yeti feet and he’s peed on me twice in ten minutes, so I definitely don’t want him.” Shaw is annoyed by the lack of bed, food, toys, or anything that would indicate this warehouse is where the dog actually belongs.

“You’re so mean, I wouldn’t lose him. The Machine would keep an eye on him. He’d be useful for missions! Better cover than a tiny little teacup pig.” Root holds the black scrap of fur up under her chin, and then pulls a face as he releases his bladder for the first time in an hour. “On the other hand, maybe you’re right.”

Shaw looks up at the cctv camera, “email me that clip.”


	76. Post-Dentata

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shoot + Dentist

“You’re really pretty,” Shaw slurs, reaching up for Root’s cheek. She’s leaning over Shaw, glowing like an angel, the light streaming through her long hair. It looks like water and Shaw wants to touch it.

“Aw, Sameen. You’re so cute when you’ve just had surgery.” Root obligingly leans close enough that Shaw can run her fingertips across Root’s cheekbones, down the curve of her jaw. Root has such an amazing nose, Shaw should draw it sometime. 

“You’re cute all the time,” Shaw can hear how mangled the words are, the cotton swabbing stretching her cheek out of shape makes it hard to speak, but Root seems to understand, “’specially when you’re mad. You get a crinkle.”

“Careful, Shaw, or I’m gonna start thinking you like me,” Root sounds highly amused, shuffles closer when Shaw tugs on her shoulder, so she’s pressed up against Shaw’s side in the bed.

“Of course I like you,” Shaw mumbles, it’s getting hard to keep her eyes open, but this seems very important, “can I sit on your lap?”


	77. Light and Shadow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shoot + Chiaroscuro

“Ooh, that’s lovely, what was your name again?” Root’s artist persona is a wafty, hippie type wearing a long robe-like outfit that makes her look kind of like a Greek Goddess. She leans far too close to Shaw as Shaw drags her charcoal across the paper, trying not to snap it, or Root in half.

“Sam,” she grunts, taking the irritation at Root’s obnoxious decision to rest her warm, firm hand on Shaw’s back while inspecting her work and channeling it into some heavy shading.

“Fantastic chiaroscuro, Sam. Really wonderful,” Artist!Root has a soft, Spanish accent for some reason. 

Shaw doesn’t quite buy the explanation that this case needs them both undercover, or that Root is more cut out to be a college art professor than she is, Root can’t even draw stick men. Apparently, according to the Machine, that’s the point. They can fake Root’s art, but Shaw has to draw in class and Root would be immediately discovered. Shaw hates it, and Root still has her hand on Shaw’s shoulder. Maybe she can report Professor Root for sexually inappropriate misconduct, she thinks. 

“Thanks,” she manages to squeeze out past the lump of annoyance slash arousal in her throat. 

“Come see me after class,” Root leans over to smudge a line with her thumb for absolutely no reason except to get even closer to Shaw. “I have some extra credit assignments I’d like to show you.”


	78. Be Your Own Hero

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shoot + Small Heroic Act

They hear the scream at the same time, and turn together. Root drops her icecream cone when she sees the little kid wobbling furiously on a bike with training wheels. He’s headed straight for the main road, the slope is gonna drop him straight into traffic. 

“Shaw!” She exclaims, but Shaw’s already moving, dodging across two lanes of cars with the kind of ease that makes Root feel like Shaw has cheatcodes to life, like no one could possibly be that good at predicting speed and movement without a supercomputer in their head. She misses the Machine more than ever, in that moment. 

Her heart’s in her throat as Shaw practically clotheslines the kid, knocking him off the bike just before it spills off the sidewalk past the park entrance. There’s a devastating crush as an SUV takes the metal frame of the bike under its wheels, and Root can’t see, can’t get across the road.

Then Shaw stands up, scooping the kid with her, setting him on his feet and squatting down in front of him. The kid is crying loudly enough that Root can hear it over traffic, and then the lights finally change and she sprints across the road after Shaw, skidding to a halt and inspecting her for damage.

A man rushes out of the park, screaming “Jordan, Jordan!” And then sees the kid, grabs him by the shoulder and drags him into a hug. Shaw and Root melt away into a gathering crowd before he can say anything else.


	79. Dirty Little Hands

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shaw + Fighting Reflexes

Shaw grits her teeth and catalogues exactly how she would get this greasy dude’s hand off her inner thigh if she wasn’t pretending to enjoy it. She can feel the finger print bruises throbbing on her tits from his earlier attentions. She simpers quietly and leans closer, effectively making his hand slide back to safer territory with her movement.   
He points out on the map exactly where his boats illegally drop off drugs on the coast and Shaw angles her head to make sure the camera catches it. Don’t break his arm, don’t break his arm, she tells herself as he worms his hand further up under her dress. His little finger is only millimetres away from her panties and it requires every ounce of self control she has not to break all his fingers. 

She leans her head on his shoulder so he doesn’t accidentally catch the murderous expression she knows is on her face right now, and deliberately traces her finger down the coast, asking a few probing questions to encourage him to spill even more of the beans in the hopes of getting in her pants.

“That is quite enough of that,” Root’s voice sounds colder and more dangerous that Shaw ever remembers hearing her, and at the signal that they’re breaking cover she cycles back in her seat, shivering with revulsion. His fingers dig into the flesh of her inner thigh as if to try and hold her there. Amazingly, Shaw is not fast enough–which has literally never happened to her before–but Root is there like some kind of avenging angel, dragging the man out of his seat by the hair before Shaw can indulge her instincts to snap his wrist.

“Hey, sweetie,” Root throws casually out as she smashes the man’s head against the table with a violent motion. “Go take a shower, I’ll see you at home.”


	80. The Darkness Leaks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Root + Contemplating the void

“You’ve been in there for about twenty minutes longer than necessary,” Shaw is suddenly hovering in the doorway to the bathroom and Root feels ike she would have jumped if she hadn’t been so busy staring into the dark space behind her eyelids. “Root.” Shaw sounds mildly exasperated now. Maybe she’s said Root’s name more than once.

“Yeah?” Root manages to peel her eyes open, her whole body leaden and swaying, and Shaw huffs in irritation and stomps into the bathroom, leaning over to switch off the shower, getting her arm soaked in the process. 

“C’mon,” Shaw replies more quietly, “out you get.” 

Root lets Shaw dry her off with a towel, contemplating the roughness against her pruned skin. In her deaf ear, silence reigns, the absence of the Machine a palpable sensation. 

“It’s gonna be okay,” Shaw tells her, leading her over to the bed and dressing her like she’s a baby. Sweatpants and one of Shaw’s shirts make Root feel a little more like she’s in the room, in her body, and Shaw smirks like she knew letting Root wear her clothes would help. “You’re okay.” Shaw lays down, opens her arm for Root, and Root obediently climbs into the bed, closing her eyes.   
Her wet hair’s soaking through everything, soaking Shaw’s own shirt, but Shaw doesn’t seem to mind.


	81. I'm not unfaithful but I'll stray

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shoot + jealous of a dog

“Okay boy, good boy, let me see.” Root watches with interest–because soft-voice-Shaw is a rarity–as Shaw attempts to gently inspect the dog’s wounds. He’s a pretty big guy, a mastiff or something, she thinks, and when he snaps at Shaw Root flinches. Shaw’s fast enough to avoid getting bitten, though.

“I dunno how we’re gonna get him in the car,” Shaw sits back on her heels, distress hardening her face. “Any ideas?”

“We could wrap him in a blanket or something?” John hazards, his breathing still heavy from the four floors he had to sprint down. 

The dog whines, moves his head until he’s looking at Root, and whines again. Shaw grimaces, “he’ll take your hand off. I guess we’ll have to go and get some sedatives.”   
The dog wriggles painfully, trying to get to his feet, eyes still fixed on Root. “Uh..” Root takes a small step back, “is he gonna take my hand off?” 

“Not an angry noise,” Shaw tells her, “come here. Slowly. Don’t look him in the eyes.” 

“Are you sure?” Root takes a half step forwards, and the dog yips quietly, dragging his gunshot back leg after him as he manages to get to his feet, struggling toward Root who looks at Shaw for instruction.

The dog’s tail starts wagging gently, and even Root knows that’s a good sign. She tentatively holds her hand out, ready to snatch it back, but the big dog just sighs heavily and flops at her feet, his tail still beating a steady rhythm. 

Root slowly bends down, and rubs him gently behind the ears. The dog huffs, his sides heaving, and Shaw cocks her head, looking at them. “Huh.”   
“What should I do?” Root asks, keeping her voice low and calm. 

“I’m gonna get a dressing.” Shaw says quietly, rummaging in her kit bag and coming out with a bandage before padding over to Root, but as soon as she’s close, the dog growls and stiffens, turning his head towards Shaw and baring big teeth. 

“Uh, you’re okay, buddy, she’s just trying to help,” Root pets the dog behind the ears, since he seems to have no intention of snapping at her.

“Here.” Shaw grumpily puts the wrapped bandage on the ground and slides it over, before retreating. As soon as she does, the dog relaxes again, looking up at Root with trust written all over his face.

“Aw, don’t be jealous, Shaw,” Root flashes Shaw a quick grin, seeing the downturned mouth and drawn in eyebrows. “I’m sure he’ll like you when he gets to know you.”


	82. Inhale

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shoot + Deep Breaths

“You should see them, sweetie,” Root drawls it heatedly into the shell of Shaw’s ear, fully aware that Shaw can’t see a thing, thanks to the thick black blindfold over her eyes.  
Shaw whines softly, sagging in the silk bonds that are holding her arms up toward the ceiling. Root thinks that even if Shaw can’t hear the people watching that she must be overly aware of each person’s eager eyes draping across Shaw’s mostly naked body. 

The leather horse under her knees is slick with sweat, Root trails her fingers across it playfully, knowing Shaw’s oversensitized skin will feel the movement of the material like it’s a direct caress. “You wanna show them how good you are?” She licks the soft, warm space behind Shaw’s ear, making her flinch and shiver before she nods.

“Yeah,” Shaw exhales it, and Root presses her grin against Shaw’s cheekbone before straightening up and rounding the bench, selecting a nice, short flogger with knots on the ends of the tails that’ll leave vicious marks behind them.

“Count for us, angel,” she drags the leather tendrils over Shaw’s already bruised ass. “Deep breaths.”


	83. How Dare You?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shaw + Protective

“Why the fuck did you even take him with you?” Shaw has her low, smouldering voice of sheer rage on, and Root shivers inadvertently.

“We had a couple of hours to kill after we wrapped up our side… I thought it might come in handy!” Root tries to justify, although she knows there’s no escaping what she’s done this time.

“And now he’s dead,” Shaw says hollowly, looking at the broken form in her hands. “Dead.”

“How was I supposed to predict they’d use a grenade..” Root reaches out like she’s going to touch the blackened corpse of what used to be Shaw’s favourite vibrator. “Sameen… We’ll get you a new one.”

“They stopped making him,” Shaw refuses to be placated, “as well you know.” 

“The Machine will figure something out,” Root pleads.

“The Machine would probably put a fucking spy cam in him. Just.. forget it,” Shaw tenderly places the burned remnants into the waste paper basket, looks down at it for a long moment and then turns to Root, her eyes full of pain. “He’s dead.”


	84. Jigsaw Pieces

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shoot + Puzzle

“Seriously, you’re going to do a puzzle?” Shaw complains, watching Root carefully sorting edge pieces from the huge pile, which she also colour codes into different sections.

“We’re here for ten hours, we can’t leave the house, and even you can’t nap that long,” Root has the very tip of her tongue poking out in concentration as she rummages through the puzzle pieces. “Or if you can I’d be very impressed. You shot down all my other ideas…”

“They were all ‘lets have sex,” Shaw points out, irritated.

“I’m bored, Shaw, you don’t want to fuck, you don’t want to talk, you just want to lie on the sofa pretending to be asleep. Let me do this dragon puzzle or think of something more fun to do.” Root says dismissively. So what if Shaw’s argument against fucking here was mostly sensible. The Machine would totally warn them in time if anyone was on their way, and Root is an excellent improviser, so she’s sure they could have a lovely time even without supplies. Maybe Shaw is super into anal or something else inconvenient for this kind of situation. 

She methodically organises her piles into different locations according to the general layout implied by the puzzle box lid, and starts laying down edges.  
Two hours later, Shaw’s leg is pressed up against hers under the table, and they’ve finished all the sky and most of the top half of the cliff. Root is feeling much less bored.


	85. Acorns

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shoot + Hun

“You’re such a good girl,” Root coos, and even though she’s talking to Attila, Shaw’s brain still processes it as a compliment for her, and she softens against Root’s side, joining her in petting their amazing doggo. “Did you see, Shaw? As soon as I called her she came back and left that squirrel alone.”

“I did see,” Shaw agrees, curling her fingers into the soft fur behind Attila’s ears, “although that squirrel had it coming. It’s the same little fucker that was throwing acorns at me the other day.”

“How could you possibly know that?” Root asks affectionately, Attila’s tail thwapping against her leg.

“It had that asshole look about it.” Shaw declares, waving a hand in the general direction of said squirrel, “I could see its evil little eyes.”

“You seem to have an unlikely vendetta against squirrels,” Root teases lightly, running her fingers across the back of Shaw’s wrist, “did you have some tragic formative experience?”

“They’re rats up trees. But dumber. At least rats are smart and don’t yell at you and throw acorns for no reason,” Shaw really thought she’d be able to befriend the squirrel, but if it doesn’t want to be friends with her, she doesn’t want to be friends with it either, little fucker.


	86. Hold Steady

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shoot + gym

“You’re the one who said you needed to work on your arms,” Shaw points out as Root curses and moans and pushes herself off the floor into a decent pushup. 

“The Machine said I needed to work on my arms, the traitor,” Root huffs, red faced and sweating. Shaw watches with interest as another bead of liquid rolls down Root’s jaw and plops onto the mat. 

“If you insist on holding two guns, you gotta be able to hold them steady,” Shaw points out reasonably, finishing her own second set of fifty and rolling onto her back to do some sit ups. Now she has to peek surreptitiously at Root on the up, but as a bonus she can now see down the dip between Root’s small breasts. She slows her sit up arc to keep pace with Root’s slug-like pushup.

“Ten,” Root grunts, her arms shaking as she levers herself back up and then promptly collapses onto her sides, “and I hate both of you.”


	87. So Jealous

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shaw + Jealous

“I’m not mad.” Shaw stomps around the subway in a way that indicates that yes, yes she is mad. “I just… I didn’t expect it.”

“I had no idea you felt that way, Sameen,” Root’s stomach hurts at the look on Shaw’s face, a look she never thought she’d see… jealousy drawing Shaw’s features into unfamiliar lines.

“I thought you were supposed to be good at people. At me.” Shaw sounds genuinely upset.

“I’m sorry, honestly, sweetie. I would never have done it if I’d known it would make you feel like this.” Root wipes at her face neurotically, like evidence of her betrayal is still smeared there. 

“Just… bring me a fucking burger if you’re going to come in here licking the best sauce in town off your fingers,” Shaw kicks the bench angrily. “I thought you cared.”


	88. Swiss Army Knife?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shoot + Lube

Shaw cannot stop laughing, which is really not helpful, but she’s too tied up to actually assist Root anyway. 

Root tries to pick up the escaped container of lube one more time, but once again, it slips out of her slick hands and shoots across the room, bouncing off the wall and under the bed. 

“Fuck that,” Root declares, throwing her hands up, “I’m gonna rinse off,” Shaw is laughing so much she might pull a muscle, Root’s indignant, red face and the streaks of lube all over her chest from the exploding lube tube really rob her all dignity. “And you…” Root points at Shaw’s clenching stomach, “don’t think I can’t find another bottle in moments.”

“Maybe you should get the can opener,” Shaw wheezes, practically vibrating. Root has lube in her hair she hasn’t even noticed yet, and sure, Shaw’s gonna pay for the merriment later, but that’ll be fun too.


	89. Shawberry

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shaw + Strawberry

“You look adorable.” Root coos, straightening Shaw’s costume. 

It’s the closest Shaw has been to punching her since they started doing… whatever it is that they’re doing, but she breathes through the urge with some effort, her blood boiling with indignation and humiliation. “I’m a fucking strawberry.” She growls, yanking angrily at the edge of her massive, rotund costume. 

“Well it’s not like John was going to fit in there,” Root points out sensibly, “and it’s not every day you get to foil an terror attack at a harvest festival." 

"I still don’t see why we don’t just take him down now.” Shaw kicks at a hay bale and almost overbalances. She sees Root swallow the laugh in her eyes and huffs angrily. 

“Because he has a carton of Anthrax hidden somewhere here, and this historical building doesn’t exactly have CCTV.” Root says for the umpteenth time, and Shaw groans, sweaty and uncomfortable and just plain miserable. 

Root gives her a look that’s too close to sympathy for Shaw and she turns around, stomping her little red elf shoes, which isn’t nearly as satisfying as clunky boots.

“I’ll make it up to you later, Sameen,” Root calls after her, merriment still tangled through her voice. Shaw punches a scarecrow in the face so hard its head explodes, and makes her way out into the sunshine, looking for their target.


	90. Sticky

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shoot + Syrup

“This was stickier than I expected,” Root hums, running her hand down Shaw’s belly, only mildly inhibited by the maple syrup that makes her golden skin shine.  
Shaw looks at her with as much ‘are you fucking kidding me’ as she can manage given her current state of restrained, belly up on the bed with her wrists tied to her ankles behind her back.

“Don’t give me that look,” Root has a smirk in her voice and she hasn’t so much as glanced at Shaw, clearly somehow reading Shaw’s face from the minute shifts in the six pack she’s currently stroking. 

Shaw shifts in her bonds and waits for Root to decide what to do next. They’re… five or six shawgasms…orgasms deep, she’s a bit fuzzy and can’t quite decide if the last one was actually two, and she’s about ready to be untied, but Root still has some edgy energy in her fingertips she probably needs to leave painted on Shaw’s skin. 

Root’s mouth is warm when she leans down to lick Shaw’s belly, follow the line of her hip, and try cleaning her up further with her mouth, and Shaw sighs happily, relaxing into the soft attention.


End file.
